LIBRARY OF CONGRESS, 



COPYRIGHT OFFICE. 



No registration of title of this book 
as a preliminary to copyright protec- 
tion has been found. 



Forwarded to Order Division 



sep 13 w: 



(Date) 
(Apr. 5, 1901—5,000.) ^ * 




THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 




The American Cavalier. 






THE AMERICANS 
CAVALIER 




BY 



OPIE READ 




AUTHOR OF "THE HARKRIDERS", "A KENTUCKY 

COLONEL", "THE CAPTAIN'S ROMANCE", 

"ODD FOLKS," ETC., ETC. 





WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 



BY 



J. J. GOULD and F. R. GRUGER 



CHICAGO: 

THOMPSON & THOMAS 

Publishers 






.. .**%>** 



^m 







Copyrighted 1903 by 

THE CURTIS PUBLISHING CO. 

Copyrighted 1904 by 

THOMPSON & THOMAS 






This Book Is Dedicated to My Sincere Friend, 
Forrest Crissey. 



CONTENTS. 



The Spirit of the American 



The Chicago Man 39 

The Chevalier of Industry ... 73 

The New York Business Man . 107 

The Puget Sound Man .... 129 

After the War 151 

A Cavalier of the Careless Fifties. 183 

The Pioneer Business Man . . . 211 



15 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



Frontispiece 

The Yankee had been so reckless as to declare that 
within six months he would have trains running 
across the bridge 25 

Into strange and far places he has sometimes pre- 
ceded the American Flag 35 

His swift noontime lunch is grave 43 

Fishing or hunting he works like a Trojan . . 47 

Are you going to put your son to a profession 59 

He sees them cartooned and he roars. He does not 
know that he is included in the cartoon . 65 

If a picture tickles his peculiar admiration he will 
buy it almost regardless of price .... 69 

An' yere's er X er spreadin' out his legs an' a sling- 
in' out his hands like a sawbuck .... 81 

Scourged with a text the opposing lawyer bowed 
his head in defeat 93 

But the moment you got out of the court house you 
were a thief again 97 

To sneer at the west is culture 109 

A man whose bragging is broad enough to em- 
brace a sort of patriotism 147 

He joked with his old master and laughed over the 
time when they were boys together . . .155 

They would have mint julep on the veranda . . 189 



PREFACE. 

" I have a piece of serious work to 
perform," said Jefferson. " I must write 
a declaration of Independence." " Why, 
that is easy," spoke up Hamilton. 
" I've got to write the preface to a 
book." 

This little lie helps me along toward 
a truth — the truth of a serious task set 
by the publishers of this book — a pref- 
ace. In the days when they shut men 
up for opinion and kept them in prison 
fifteen or twenty years, a man wrote a 
book. He believed that he was inspired 
with truth and in the writing of it he 
reveled. A publisher was found, read 
the book and not too effusively, but with 
the slow dignity of his guild, accepted it. 
" But," said he, " no preface has been 
provided. A book without a preface is 
like unto a rhinoceros without a horn. 
Tell the saintly author of this bundle 
of truth that we must have a preface." 

The author sent back word that all 
the truth he knew had been told in the 
book, whereupon the publisher replied: 
" Then tell a lie and I warrant you it 
will outlive all of your truths." 

The author gripped his quill and 
writhed but the cauldron wouldn't 
bubble. He threw in the toad of en- 



xiv PREFACE 

deavor and the lizard of main strength 
— poured in the blood of a sow, all meta- 
phorically, you understand, but, in the 
language of that delightful purist, Buck 
McFadden, there was nothing doing. 
Finally — so the story goes — he stabbed 
himself, and as he lay weltering — good 
word — the prison surgeon came, ex- 
amined him and said : " You are fast 
bleeding to death." 

" Ah, and is this my life blood here 
on the stones beside me?" 

" Yea, the same," answered the physi- 
cian. 

" Then," exclaimed the dying man, 
" the problem is solved. I will write the 
preface with my life's blood." He did 
so and from the sales of his life's blood 
and his life's work, he realized enough 
to bury him. 

Ah, but as to this book, these charac- 
ter sketches. My sole aim has been 
that they should be truthful, earnest, 
humorous, poetic, prosaic, inspirational 
and at times interesting. If I have been 
beset by too much modesty, let it be ac- 
credited to my early newspaper train- 
ing. 

OPIE READ. 



The American Cavalier 



THE SPIRIT OF THE AMERICAN. 



H<yw the Commercial Traveler Has Won where the 
Athlete and Philosopher Failed. 

On the top of a bleak hill, where the 
wind mourned among the scrub pines, a 
boy sat whittling with a rude knife made 
by the village blacksmith. Puritan was 
his stock, Yankee his blood, and what a 
destiny he whittled out for his country! 
In his case how true it was that necessity 
proved mother to invention. Across the 
sea whence had come his people the fa- 
vored youngster had toys, but here there 
was none, and this depriving hardship 
15 



16 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

stirred necessitous rebellion against an 
empty condition, and from that time dates 
a lessening of man's labor upon the earth. 
For this youngster made toys as a youth, 
and as a man invented machines, and for 
his descendants these machines are con- 
quering the commerce of the world. 

Of itself persistency is not a conquering 
force. Without persistency, it is true, 
there can be but little of achievement, but 
with it there may be final and total de- 
feat. Physical man, indeed intellectual 
man, is not a world conqueror. The ath- 
lete and the philosopher may fail. What, 
then, is the supreme force of the world? 
A sort of spirituality that lies beyond the 
province of definition. It arises out of 
surroundings and conditions. It cannot 
by will be acquired; it is the essence of 



SPIRIT OF THE AMERICAN 17 

long experience, of effort, of necessity. 
The settlement of North America marked 
a new era in the affairs of the human fam- 
ily. A new man was to arise out of a 
virgin condition, and fate marked him as 
an instrument to overturn traditions and 
to make the waters of history run uphill. 
A composite man, with the blood of all 
peoples in his veins, he is inspired with a 
quick knack to deal with all phases of hu- 
man nature. What to older nations would 
be regarded as a semi-marvelous insight 
— commercially, I mean — is viewed by 
him as being simply a Yankee intelligence. 
His landscape is dotted with schools and 
many of his hilltops are adorned with col- 
leges, but in his land the profound scholar, 
such as characterizes England and Ger- 
many, is exceedingly rare. His province 



18 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

does not seem to be to dig up the past 
and scrape from it the rust of centuries, 
but to throw his searchlight into the fu- 
ture. Cobden, the father of English free 
trade, and whose system Mr. Chamber- 
lain is now striving to overturn, expected 
fondly that the Americans, who at that 
time had not begun to threaten the world 
with an inundation of their wares, would 
content themselves with being hewers of 
wood and drawers of water. And so they 
are. But they have hewed the wood into 
new shapes and have drawn water to raise 
steam for machines not dreamed of in 
Cobden's industrial philosophy. By for- 
eigners of ordinary mind such inventors 
are railed at and threatened, but abler men 
study them that they may preach the doc- 
trine of emulation. And such is the ser- 



SPIRIT OF THE AMERICAN 19 

mon preached in England to-day. " Let 
us be quicker," says Mr. Chamberlain, and 
the British audience cries out, " Hear, 
hear ! " But does quickness come of a 
determination to be less slow? You might 
as well say to the hippopotamus, " Hop 
around now, be spry." The American is 
quick, not because he was resolved to be 
so but because he was born that way. Is 
he different physically? No. Whence 
comes it, then? Out of the pine woods 
of the past. It is spiritual. It cannot be 
caught. Legislation may invite it, but it 
will not come. For many years Europe 
amused herself with laughing at our use- 
less hurry. But hurry may be toned down 
to the faculty for immediate decision and 
swift accomplishment. 

The undereducated boy, plowing alone 



20 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

out on the prairie, becomes a thinker and 
therefore an individual. In his home there 
are books, the lives of men who plowed 
and split rails and became great. This 
causes him to plow better than he other- 
wise would; he has been taught to be- 
lieve that to do a thing well is the first 
offering on the altar of ambition. A 
young fellow who had been stationed to 
protect the sheep came home with the re- 
mark : " I didn't kill but one wolf, but I'll 
bet he's killed deader than any wolf that 
ever lived." 

It may have been his fate to go through 
life killing wolves, but his belief that he 
was killing them deader than any one else 
ever killed wolves was enough to keep his 
enthusiasm alive — and as long as one is 
enthusiastic he is young and fitted to ac- 



SPIRIT OF THE AMERICAN 21 

complish notable things. In the eye of the 
careless world the American plowboy may 
amount to nothing. Cobden saw him and 
smiled and said, " That's right, my son, 
keep on plowing. We are the world's 
manufacturers and my advice to you is 
not to lose sight of that fact." But he 
didn't keep on plowing. He yielded the 
reins to some smaller chap and branched 
out into the field of adventure, with the 
memory of his book, and with a newspaper 
in his hand. Out of the whittling of his 
ancestor had come a machine, and he car- 
ried it into new territories and now he has 
taken it to Australia, to China; across 
the rivers of India he is throwing bridges, 
to the disgust of men who said that he 
was presumptuous. The Englishman had 
looked at a river and said that he would 



22 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

bridge it within two years. Of course, his 
decision was final. And to a neighboring 
bungalow he went to regale himself with 
the peat-scented juice of Scotland. The 
company that wanted the bridge was much 
disheartened. The adventurous president 
had thought that possibly it might be con- 
structed within a year. But the English- 
man had spoken, and it was not to be. 
But the American, who happened to be 
within hearing, had not spoken. And 
when he did speak the president cried out 
in astonishment and the Englishman 
laughed. The Yankee had been so reck- 
less as to declare that within six months 
he would have trains running across the 
bridge. 

" Take him up," exclaimed the English- 
man. 




The Yankee had been so reckless as to declare that 

within six months lie would have trains 

running across the bridge. 



SPIRIT OF THE AMERICAN 25 

The president took him up. The Yan- 
kee telegraphed to his home office and 
within six months trains were running 
across the bridge. It was called a piece 
of impudence, but it was the best bridge 
in India. 

A European thinker gave it as his 
opinion that the Americans could never 
become great commercially because there 
they were not " homogeneous enough." 
And this grave and laboriously thought 
out dictum was sufficient temporarily to 
allay the rising fears of an industrial na- 
tion abroad; but along came the Amer- 
ican drummer with a sample-case full of 
diametric opinions. 

The ages bring about mighty changes: 
Greece, Rome, Spain, France, England — 
America. This is the order of succession. 



26 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

But how different the first conquest from 
the last. The sword, the cannon — the 
mind. Recently a Frenchman arose in the 
Chamber of Deputies and said that with 
her free school system the United States 
was conquering the world. Mind, intelli- 
gence, and, supreme over both, spirit. In 
all ages there has been a spirit of patriot- 
ism, but in different ages and in different 
lands how different the meaning of the 
word. In Europe it was devotion to king ; 
not to home, family, the dear particular 
spot of earth whereon a man might trace 
his people back into the mist-curtained 
past — king. There could be no reverence 
for law, for above the law sat enthroned 
the monarch. There could be no love of 
country, for that was rebellion against 
one greater than the country. But there 



SPIRIT OF THE AMERICAN 27 

was spirit, haughty and ready to risk life 
for the crown. That spirit placed the 
Louies of France above all other men. A 
greater spirit was born and then came 
the mighty revolution, and though it 
thought to copy, yet was it unlike the 
spirit of the American Revolution. It was 
more of a furious revenge than a patriot- 
ism. It bore to mankind no uplifting mes- 
sage, for it was a wanton spiller of man's 
blood. Above the licentious king it held 
no effective threat, for Napoleon ruled 
with a sword ground to razor-edge. 
In America how different was the 
spirit of liberty. Peace meant peace. 
When the last foe had laid down his 
arms not a drop of blood was shed. 
Religious faction, always dangerous to 
real liberty, was told that no one creed 



28 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

should be set above another. That 
was a new spirit — the spirit of wise tol- 
erance. Is it not strange that the great 
men of Europe did not foresee that out of 
this sudden advancement of man was to 
come a world-conquering force? The 
only man who seemed to realize the por- 
tent of coming power was Frederick the 
Great, and his was simply the recognition 
of one man, of Washington, to whom he 
sent a sword upon which was engraved, 
" From the oldest aoldier to the greatest." 
How slower than a dunce in a village 
school has the old world been to accept the 
truth about America. Why, when the 
Spanish war came up naval authorities in 
Germany declared that Spain would soon 
blow us from the sea ; and forgetful Eng- 
land, who had cause to remember our 



SPIRIT OF THE AMERICAN 29 

prowess on the deep, was loth to believe 
the news from Manila. 

A lasting commerce is the true test of 
a nation's greatness. Art, beautiful and 
uplifting as it is, more often marks decay 
than progress. The building of a mill 
means advancement; it means that great 
books are some time to follow. Com- 
mercialism, which the aesthete is wont to 
decry, discovered the new world. Com- 
forts, the result of trade, bring leisure for 
study and the betterment of man. If there 
should ever be a universal language the 
ship will prove the teacher. The rudder 
is the tongue of the world. 

The business man of America is differ- 
ent from all others. In dealing with a 
free and thinking people he gives his cus- 
tomers credit for knowing what they want. 



30 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

The manufacturer stood ever ready to 
make new things and to make them as the 
customer desired that they should be made. 
In England it has always been different. 
You take what the manufacturer has to 
offer or get nothing. And why not? 
Hasn't he been in the business long enough 
to know what is best for you? He fol- 
lows in the footsteps of his grandfather, 
and surely you don't mean to infer that the 
old man didn't know what he was about. 
Perhaps you sought to explain the ad- 
vantages of a left-hand plow. You say 
that with it you believe that the furrows 
would be straighter, as the lead horse, in- 
stead of walking waywardly on the 
" land," walks in the furrow. He does 
not halt to investigate your theory, but 
disputes it. He has never made a left- 



SPIRIT OF THE AMERICAN 31 

hand plow and never will. He doesn't 
see why one should be made. It is non- 
sense. But the American catches the idea 
at once and makes the left-hand plow. 
His willingness to please is thus demon- 
strated and customers naturally come to 
him. The Englishman goes home, calls 
a mass meeting and denounces American 
" underhand " methods of trade. This is 
not a mere supposition. It is a fact, re- 
counted by more than one American com- 
mercial traveler. 

Ah, and what the traveler has done and 
is doing. Long before he was sent abroad 
he built up the hotels at home. He was 
the circuit rider of trade. He taught the 
country merchant not only how to buy 
goods but how to sell them. Into every 
rural community he brought new ideas. 



32 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

He was a newsletter. To the village he 
gave a taste of cosmopolitanism. More 
than the lecturer, the book, he has made 
the country homogeneous. Perhaps he 
married the daughter of the leading mer- 
chant of a remote town, and it is almost 
safe to say that had he existed numerously 
before the Civil War there wouldn't have 
been any war. He made local literature 
by discovering the traits and celebrating 
the peculiarities of the village " charac- 
ter " — put him into a book, not with his 
own busy, figuring pencil, but induced a 
more leisurely pen to catch his whims and 
to portray them. He was the embodiment 
of adaptability. He did not engage in po- 
litical dispute, but with a new story 
soothed the rising temper of quarrelsome 
factions. As well as a merchant he was a 



SPIRIT OF THE AMERICAN 33 

diplomatist and a statesman. During the 
earlier years of his career, when trade was 
slow and must needs be humored and 
persuaded, he usually spent a day in a town 
about the public square, set up the water- 
melon, sometimes a water somewhat 
stronger; went to church if Sunday 
chanced to fall opportunely, called the 
preacher brother, dropped a green note 
into the contribution box and the next day 
sold goods all around the public square. 
He " Jimed," " Tomed," " 'Squired," and 
" Coloneled " the shade-hunting denizens 
before attempting to effect a sale. Dur- 
ing that time he was a public entertainer. 
He was ever alert and no one found him 
weary. In advance he had caught the 
spirit of coming America. And now they 
are sending him to Europe, Asia, Africa. 



34 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

Into strange and far places he has some- 
times preceded the American flag. His 
advent sometimes antedates the first con- 
sulate. No wonder that a firm in Chicago 
inserted the following advertisement : 
" Wanted, a man who can joke in Arabic." 

Out of America's want of homogeneity 
many characters must needs arise, and a 
varied commerce is best handled by differ- 
ent types. Our resources call for every 
sort of temperament, and what one man 
may fail to sell with an engaging story 
another may dispose of with grave dis- 
quisition. 

" Those Americans are most wondrous- 
ly tricky people," said an Australian. 
" One came into my place of business and 
told me a story that tickled me into buying 
a big bill of goods, and when serious re- 




Into strange and far places he has sometimes preceded 
the American flag. 



SPIRIT OF THE AMERICAN 37 

action had set in, as it always must, in 
came a most solemn chap from the same 
firm and sold me another bill/' 

The nations of the earth are not much 
frightened by wars. War means victory 
for some one, and victory means at least 
a temporary glory. But in this latter day 
a commercial conquest is viewed with 
alarm. France could come nearer recover- 
ing from her defeat at the hands of the 
Germans than England or Germany can 
ever come toward regaining lost suprem- 
acy in trade. Nations push one another 
downhill, so gently at first that it is not 
perceptible; but once started it is impos- 
sible to stop. Chamberlain realizes this 
and believes that the cause and the remedy 
lie in legislation. But it lies more nearly 
in national trait — spirit. " Character " 



38 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

achieves all that is achieved. It discovers 
and creates. About every man and every 
nation that succeeds there is something 
which the contemplative onlooker regards 
as peculiar. It is originality, and in the 
matter of making and selling goods the 
Americans are the most original of peo- 
ples. In our national life the windy spec- 
ulator is not a factor. He has not enough 
of breath to blow a small sail toward a 
distant shore. The creator and the seller 
are the forces that are making a commer- 
cial conquest of the world. 



THE CHICAGO MAN. 



One hundred years ago, where Chicago now stands, a 
fort was erected, a few cabins were built; and thus was 
set a new pace in the affairs of man. 

I do not here essay to write the history 
of a city which to the distant world first 
raised its banner, a flame-flag in the black 
sky of an October night ; I shall give not 
even a hint of its startling progress, nor 
boast as we her adopted children are wont 
to do, but in free-hand and doubtless an 
erroneous way speak what I conceive to 
be characteristic of her typical business 
man. The wise have said that the most 
" natural " critic of literature is one who 
has failed as a creator; and this gives 



40 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

to me a sort of inherent right and makes 
me bold to talk of the business man of 
Chicago. Perhaps I do not make myself 
plain enough, and therefore let me say 
that I know nothing about the methods of 
successful business. As one of the en- 
vious failures I ascribe success largely to 
luck and opportunity. Opportunity may 
come to every one, in some form or other ; 
but luck, which is the ability to recognize 
opportunity, is as often the god-favor of 
the ignorant as of the wise. 

Getting at the typical business man of 
Chicago is about like attempting to catch 
the typical fish of the sea. He is of all 
nations and of all methods, but no matter 
what his present line may be, he is almost 
sure to have failed in some other branch 
of trade. " Do you know anything about 



THE CHICAGO MAN 41 

the grocery business? " was asked of a 
man who had applied for a position and 
his answer obtained for him the place: 
" I ought to ; I failed in dry goods." 

In New York it is the complacent be- 
lief that business will come. In Chicago 
the merchant knows that he must go after 
it, and thus, like an animal that breaks 
its way through stubborn bushes, he is 
well muscled. He holds religion in a sort 
of busy esteem, and when into his office 
comes his wife's preacher, he says, " Well, 
sir, what can I do for you? " Of course 
he does not recognize the minister and 
therefore means, " What can you do for 
me?" Breathing the air of an adven- 
turous and speculative city he is gambler 
enough to place not too high a value upon 
his money, but his time and his business 



42 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

talk are sacred. About the walls of his 
adversaries he blows the ram's horn of 
boast, and if the walls should be jarred 
down he is willing, upon good collateral, 
to lend money to his enemy. Education, 
acquaintance with the nice methods of the 
classics in business is often conducive to 
a slow-motioned exactness of detail, and 
therefore he regards a college as an 
adornment rather than a necessity — the 
tail of the peacock rather than the spurs 
of the rooster. In his house there are 
books, a bright array in gilt; but he is 
too busy to read them during the week 
and on Sunday he is too anxious for Mon- 
day to come. His wife reads them and 
talks them when she has company and he 
is proud of the fact. He believes that 
what she does not know he does. In this 




His szvift noontime luncheon is grave. 



THE CHICAGO MAN 45 

broad land there is no better husband. 
Art criticises, business accepts, and to him 
marriage is more or less of a business. 
And he is generally a stranger in the di- 
vorce court until prosperity has made him 
aesthetic. His success rather than his pov- 
erty makes marriage a failure. 

During business hours no man could 
be more serious. His swift noon-time 
luncheon is grave; the road to the quick 
service counter is a sort of war-path. He 
groans, not at the expense of coffee and 
pie, but at the fact that gulping it has 
cost him six minutes. His watch is his 
commercial prayer-book. But when with 
many a twinge and sore pang he has 
turned from the city for an outing he is 
a capital companion. His stories are 
quick and to the point. His sense of 



46 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

humor is as keen as a pain. The nerve of 
his jollity is exposed. Fishing or hunt- 
ing he works like a Trojan. He has no 
book in which to enter expenses. Doubt- 
less he feels that somebody is going to 
pay for his fun. Somebody does, usually. 
When his mind is made up to return to 
town he begins to grow nervous. No 
train is fast enough. He regrets the time 
lost, feeling that no one but himself can 
run his business, and for the most part 
he is right, since experience has proved 
that it begins to lag as soon as the engine 
of his great vitality is wanting. 

As the years pass the average business 
man of Chicago is becoming gentler in 
his methods, but seems to deplore the fact. 
He regards cultivation as the old age of 







n 



Fishing or hinting lie works like a Trojan. 



THE CHICAGO MAN 49 

the mind, though he has outlived the par- 
agrapher's slander: 

Chicago Wife (to husband) — My dear, 
are you ready for dinner? 

Husband — Will be as soon as I take 
off my coat. 

When this was first printed he did not 
laugh at it. He simply said, " What's that 
fool trying to get at ? " At home he eats 
with more deliberation than of yore, but 
with the coming of each summer he 
continues to offend Mr, Astor by sitting 
on the front steps, in the twilight, while 
a street organ gives to him broken re- 
minders of a time when, to please his wife, 
he sat through the lingering tortures of 
grand opera. His " seminaried " daugh- 
ter, coming from a walk, hints that it is 
not the proper thing to sit out in public 



50 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

view, on a strip of flaming carpet, and 
he turns to her with an air that says, 
" Who built this town? " If you tell him 
that his city is corrupt, he may reply that 
it is not worse than other cites; but if 
you say that his municipality is the most 
corrupt of all the cities of the earth, the 
chances are that he will agree with you. 
His is a town of superlatives. Sometimes, 
having been too busy to vote, he swears 
because incompetent men get office. He 
snorts for a " business administration/' 
and when it seems that he is about to get 
it, votes the other way. He is a man of 
strong prejudices and that accounts for 
much of his mental vigor. With Bailey 
he unconsciously believes that " the mind 
is like the fire-fly: it only shines when on 
the wing. When once we rest we darken.*' 



THE CHICAGO MAN 51 

He does not darken, for his mind is a 
workshop whose fires are not put out. He 
dreams of trade. And when he fails he 
begins again, like a spider whose web has 
been broken. In Chicago there is a larger 
percentage of recuperation after bank- 
ruptcy than in any other city. It is be- 
cause a Chicago man does not realize that 
he is too old to climb again. On the 
Board of Trade an old man who had 
domineered the pit failed for more than 
a million, and a few days afterward he 
opened a tobacco shop. ''' Why did you 
do this?" an acquaintance inquired. 
" You have friends enough to take care 
of you." And the old man replied: 
" Take care of me? I haven't time to be 
taken care of ; I expect to put up a twelve- 
story building." Death lent him a kindly 



52 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

hand and saved him the worry of labor 
troubles, but he had the true Chicago 
spirit. 

The successful business man in the 
Western metropolis rarely becomes a 
snob. Snobbery means retirement from 
trade, and he does not intend to retire. 
With much truth in his philosophy he be- 
lieves that to quit work means an early 
death. Aim in life keeps men alive. The 
determination to be avenged upon an ene- 
my has lifted many a man from the bed 
whose sheets had begun to gather the 
dews of death. 

Society resents the rude manners of the 
boy that has grown too fast. In the swift 
upbuilding of Chicago there has been an 
ungroomed strength, a sort of mighty 
awkwardness ; and this the country seems 



THE CHICAGO MAN 53 

to have looked upon with a jeer and a 
frown. All of the sprawling giant's at- 
tempts at art were laughed at, first in old 
cities and then in new villages. Chicago's 
painting was the " Sign of the Big 
Butcher " ; its music was the squeal of 
the pig; its literature the vealy low of 
the yearling calf. Occasionally some de- 
funct novelist of the East would get down 
off his stiff-jointed high horse to pat the 
calf on the back and in return for this 
kindliness to have his hand rough- 
tongued; the thin-breasted Eastern wet- 
nurse of Western rhyme, though not ad- 
dressing herself to trade, has had an effect 
upon the Chicago business man. Rever- 
ing the East, on whose flinty hillsides his 
grandfather thanked a kind Providence 
that he was permitted to eat pie for break- 



54 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

fast, he looks to New England for his 
opinion, which the Blue-lawed land freely 
gives, importing her own opinion from 
London. He has been influenced to the 
extent of declaring that a magazine can- 
not be published successfully from Chi- 
cago, and his firm conviction has made 
a fact of his declaration. He knows that 
his newspapers are among the cleanest 
and best in the world, but newspapers are 
not literature; and besides, the East has 
agreed that they may be printed. He does 
not realize that the Sunday editions of 
these newspapers are largely literary, very 
often printing as good stories and poems 
as the very best of the magazines are of- 
fering. To him nothing is literature that 
does not bear the Eastern stamp. Tell 
him that great poems have been written 



THE CHICAGO MAN 55 

in obscurity and printed on a hand-press 
and he may reply : " Yes, but they didn't 
become literature till Boston said so." In 
nearly everything save business he is lack- 
ing in self-confidence. He heard some 
one say that the statues in Lincoln Park 
were poor and he began at once to regard 
them as paupers. Then, coming to think 
upon it, he had often noticed how unsight- 
ly they had always appeared, and he de- 
clared that they ought to be thrown out. 
But when the word of high authority pro- 
nounced some of them to be the finest in 
America, he made complete amends by re- 
marking: "Well, why didn't you say so 
before ? " In business he is skeptical of 
any man's honor; in art he accepts any 
foreign opinion. With the drama, how- 
ever, it is different. New York's favor 



56 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

does not always mean his approval. The 
play is an appeal to his immediate senses. 
The stage is largely a matter addressing 
itself to the eye, and no man has keener 
observation. He is not afraid to say that 
Shakespeare, unless played by a genius, 
is too ponderous for him. He demands 
action. There may be words, but they 
must come forth like sparks. He has 
not time for a continuous glow. He is 
patient of long waits between curtains, 
for then he can figure on a deal that he 
has in mind. Above all, he is fond of mu- 
sical comedies, full of " gags " and flash- 
ing with color. Through his eye his brain 
is rested. And his favorable judgment of 
such a show means its success throughout 
the country. At the close of each season 
the grand opera manager from the East 



THE CHICAGO MAN 57 

swears that never again will he set up 
great stars for him, that in Chicago music 
of the noblest sort knocks vainly at the 
door of the soul; but this is not true. 
The fact is that the average business man 
of Chicago, while he may not care for 
Wagner, is willing to pay his money when 
the real stars are to appear, but " thinly 
peoples the house " when the mediocre fat 
man comes forth to bray. 

Ye who are your brother's keeper may 
in this man see nothing but faults, a 
bullish aggressiveness in business and in 
society the gestures not unknown to the 
prize-ring ; but his heart is enormous, and 
his ear, which at the opera may seem dull, 
is ever keen to the cry of real distress. 
The survivor of a great calamity, he 
knows what it is to be homeless. Having 



58 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

fought his way to success, he is ever ready 
to speak an encouraging word to strug- 
gling youth. He is inclined to look upon 
energy as capital. Starting in life as a 
borrower, he is not slow to lend. Above 
all, he prides himself upon being an Am- 
erican. American commercial conquest 
abroad is a flattery to him, for he feels 
that it was his method that gave to this 
country a new and mighty impetus. In 
technical training he is not a firm believer. 
The public school is the cradle of national 
prosperity; experience is the university. 
" Are you going to put your son to a pro- 
fession? " was asked of an old man who 
had seen the great fire. " No, I believe 
not. I'd a little rather he'd make a 
living/' 

A profession is a plaything that may 




Are you going to put your son to a profession ? 



THE CHICAGO MAN 61 

possibly turn out to be an investment, but 
it is risky. It is like sitting down to whit- 
tle out a toy — the product as an invention 
may become valuable but the chances are 
against it. In a plain business scheme he 
is not overready to invest, but a mystery 
catches his speculative fancy. " Didn't 
you know you had bought a gold brick? ' : 
said one acquaintance to another. ' Well, 
come to think of it, I ought to have known 
it. I made it." 

With him poverty is an evil out of 
which every man ought to struggle. If in 
scrambling he must crack heads and mash 
fingers — get out. If good and evil are set 
before you for choice and you have not the 
time to choose, take both and throw away 
the evil at your leisure. Laziness is the 
unpardonable sin. He boasts that he has 



62 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

done the third of a day's work before the 
New York man gets down to his office. 
With him haste does not mean waste. It 
means accomplishment. Out West they 
were hanging a man. The rope became 
tangled and the sheriff set about deliber- 
ately to straighten it. " Hurry up/' said 
the victim, " I can't wait here all day. 
You must remember I'm from Chicago." 

" Speaking of surgeons," said a South 
Water Street man, " there was old Doc 
Jackson." 

" But nearly all of his patients died," 
some one spoke up. 

" That may be true, but Doc was quick." 

Statistics say that he defies death longer 
than almost any other man in the country. 
He is the One-Hoss Shay of commerce, 
and when he goes he goes all at once. 



THE CHICAGO MAN 63 

Chicago has developed types, but the 
" characters " can be traced back to older 
communities. In aggressive industry 
there is not much of character. Chicago 
is a great melodrama ; it is not a character 
play. It has action rather than whims. 
The most of the real " characters " have 
drifted from Indiana. Wisconsin, Minne- 
sota, Michigan, Ohio and Illinois, with the 
exception of the southern part, are 
almost " characterless." In these States 
there are striking individuals, it is 
true, but you can trace them back to 
older communities, of the South or the 
East. Indiana has a real " character," a 
product of the soil, and this is the secret 
of her vigorous literature. 

Indiana is the only State that has annu- 
ally a convention of authors. Of course 



64 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

they are laughed at by people who would 
not smile at a cattle convention. In the 
farm-houses these literary pilgrims have 
stimulated a love for books, not written by 
themselves, but classics which the critics 
may have sneered at a hundred years ago 
but which now of necessity must be 
praised. Many of the verses read at these 
conventions are never printed, for which 
the writers, in this day of bustle, receive 
no credit. Is it not something to write 
and not to print? The paragrapher has 
impelled the Chicago business man to 
make fun of the conventicle of scribes. 
He sees them cartooned and he roars. He 
does not know that he is included in the 
cartoon. His lack of literary self-judg- 
ment has made the caricatures market- 
able. Eugene Field, in his delightful play- 




He sees them cartooned and he roars. He does not 
knozv that he is included in the cartoon. 



THE CHICAGO MAN 67 

fulness, made sport of Chicago culture, 
and he did it in such slyness that his 
readers took him seriously. But it was 
not the earnest, humble worker that he 
gibed. It was the rich pretenders who, 
having handled " prints " in the great 
dry-goods establishments, fancied them- 
selves literary. And when the poet was 
dead these hoarse singers scrambled to 
get near the coffin that held his " melodi- 
ous dust." And now the business man 
loves the memory of a man of whom he 
had scarcely heard. He tells of the time 
when he met him fishing, or watched him 
when he bought an old book. 

When Walter Besant was in Chicago 
he remarked : " Your business man has 
to me a startling intelligence. You no 
more than hint before \ knows what you 



68 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

are going to say, and if you show the 
least hesitancy, such as halting to choose 
the right word, he will help you out. But 
he cares nothing for our literary con- 
gress. I spoke to one on this subject and 
he replied : ' What's the use of such a 
congress. It can't pass any laws/ If a 
picture tickles his peculiar admiration he 
will buy it almost regardless of price — but 
not until some one has told him that it is 
fine. Physically, I think he is about the 
most wonderful man I ever met. He will 
race up and down his place of business 
without showing weariness, but if he is to 
go a block he takes a street car. His 
mental equipment is unflagging. He 
thinks like an electric machine. And out 
of his atmosphere one day there must 
come some great literary expression. In 





// a picture tickles his peculiar admiration lie will buy 
it almost regardless of price. 



THE CHICAGO MAN 71 

poetry his grandson may evince the same 
vitality and his granddaughter may startle 
the world with a Jane Eyre." 

That may all be true. The fact is, I 
know but little of posterity. And I do 
not pretend to know the present — his 
mind; but during many years I have 
studied at him. He is as different from 
other men as Chicago is unlike other 
towns. His muscles are work and his 
mind is enterprise. Too restless to be 
spiritual, he is the exponent of motion and 
of force. 



THE CHEVALIER OF INDUSTRY. 



On the shores of the Arkansas, where 
once the war-drum fiercely beat, there is 
now the hum of the spindle, the chant of 
peace, the epic of industry, the music of 
conquest. In the old day it did not seem 
consistent that cotton fabrics should well 
be manufactured in the neighborhood of 
the field where the cotton-stalk was 
grown. There was no want of fuel. On 
the distant hillside there was the black 
frown of outcropping coal; the woods 
held in their colors the secret of many 
a shrewd dye ; from the North the artisan 
was willing to come, to escape the already 
crowded hives, but in that lay a menace 

73 



74 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

to the Planter. He shuddered to think 
that his bower might be turned into a 
hive. With all of his generosity and his 
kindness, his gallantry and the lovable 
traits of his careless disposition, he had 
but the minimum of respect for the man 
without influence. To him the man who 
owned a darky was greater personally and 
of far more force as a factor of civilization 
than the builder of a mill. On the negro, 
the slave of his friend, he looked with the 
eye of more interest than on the Cracker, 
the lowly, weakened and humbled descend- 
ant of the powerful religious zealot who 
fought with Cromwell. To the Southern 
colonies had been sent as slaves a large 
number of political offenders. In all the 
affairs of life they were honest, willing to 
give their blood for principle, each one 



THE CHEVALIER OF INDUSTRY 75 

holding in glorified memory the name 
of some ancestor who, shouting in smoke 
the name of the Lord, had died at the 
stake. In a way they were emancipated. 
In slavery there was rivalry, and as a 
human chattel they were displaced by the 
negro, who in turn held them in contempt. 
This absolute monarchy in a republic re- 
garded it as essential that the Cracker 
along with the slave should know his 
place. The Cracker could vote and his 
vote must be controlled, not by force or the 
appearance of force, but by the inculcated 
and ever-present dread of offending the 
rich and the powerful. There was no 
free-school system such as now in that 
part of the country adorns with a garland 
the brow of every child. To teach a slave 
was not to be thought of unless as an 



76 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

offense against the peace and ordained re- 
ligion of the commonwealth, and in the 
case of the " white trash " it was not 
economic to put upon poverty the discon- 
tent of knowledge. The factory threat- 
ened a social and industrial revolution and 
was therefore not encouraged. 

But in the field, harrowed by war, a 
new seed was dropped — the seed of mod- 
ern progress. The sprouting was slow, 
the growing tedious; many a frost came 
to nip at its buds, many a marauder to 
trample it beneath destructive hoof, but 
it grew and finally flourished. The new 
planter arose, a man of business. Indeed, 
planting cotton was only secondary to 
other things. He became a manufacturer. 
Out to the coal-bank he built a railroad; 
where once there stood the old ginhouse 



THE CHEVALIER OF INDUSTRY 77 

there now stands a cotton-mill. A regen- 
erated Cracker is his secretary. In the 
woods there is a schoolhouse and above it 
floats the American flag. It is not only 
the flag of his country; his ancestors 
helped to make it. "My flag? Well, 
rather. My great-granddaddy furnished 
two of the stars and one of the stripes." 
He has less of drawl in speech but little 
less love of humor than was the whim- 
sical grace of his grandfather. But jok- 
ing takes time and he is a busy man. It 
was in the old time well enough to ride 
from one plantation house to another, car- 
rying an anecdote; this could be done 
while the cotton-stalk was growing, but 
the cotton-spindle must be watched. Jokes 
are now telegraphed, as they are on the 
Board of Trade, and after business hours 



78 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

the telephone is made merry with a jest. 
He might own and operate an oil field and 
yet must he yield to the amusement of 
humor. The negroes about him have not 
lost it. They learned it first from the 
whites. The Spanish negro is destitute 
of mirth, in the American sense; he has 
not the philosophic trait that, drawing out 
a distressful truth, turns it over and 
about, and upon its many phases floods a 
mellow light of tender and amusing inter- 
est. Under the new order, the old-time 
darky is not so much of a political factor. 
He is required to read and to construe the 
Constitution. The reading may with little 
effort be acquired, but properly to construe 
that document does not always lie within 
the province of the legislator. Shortly 
after the law went into effect, on a day of 



THE CHEVALIER OF INDUSTRY 79 

registration, an old darky went to the 
place where the intelligent and the learned 
were supposed to assemble to write their 
names and to receive the honor of re- 
corded citizenship. 

" Do you want to register? " the clerk 
inquired. 

" Yes, sah, dat's whut I come yere fur." 

The clerk handed to the old negro a 
pamphlet. The candidate for citizenship 
took it, turned it over, looked at it, felt of 
the texture of the paper and asked: 
"Whut is dis yere?" 

" It is the Constitution of the United 
States." 

And then in great surprise the old fel- 
low exclaimed : " Is dis yere de Conser- 
vation I been yerin' so much about ? " 

" Yes, that's it." 



80 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

" Whut you want me ter do wid it ? 
Take it home wid me? " 

" You must be able to read it and con- 
strue it if you want to register." 

" Wall, I wants ter register, dat's er 
fack. But I doan know erbout dis yere 
'struin it. But I kin read it all de same. 
Now lemme see." Over the page he 
moved his finger. " Dis is er J right here, 
ain't it?" 

" Read it." 

" I is er readin' it. Kain't fool me wid 
no J. An' yere's er X er spreadin' out 
his legs an' er flingin , out his hands like 
er sawbuck. Oh, da kain't fool me; I 
knows 'em." 

" Are you going to read the Constitu- 
tion?" 

" Wall, sah, my eyes ain't right good ter 




An' yere's er X er spreadin' out his legs an' er ftingin' 
oid his hands like er sawbuck. 



THE CHEVALIER OF INDUSTRY 83 

day. I'll come back ter mor' and handle it 
like er preacher readin' his tex\" 

As soon as they gave to him the book 
he knew that he was done for, and under 
that Constitution which he could not read 
he may have felt that he had a right to 
register and to vote, but his humor saved 
him trouble. 

In the Middle West, where commercial 
and agricultural development are as mir- 
acles, we do not halt in our rush to con- 
sider the solid growth of the New South. 
The money, which in colder zones is tire- 
less in its industry, is disposed to be more 
leisurely in a softer atmosphere. The 
shade and the hammock have a strong and 
constantly pulling appeal. To muse is 
sometimes sweeter than to read, though 
one may end in a dream and the other 



84 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

in that knowledge which they say is power. 
The New South not only had to shake off 
the dream of tradition, but had to break 
the ever-present spell cast by the climate. 
From the North came quick-stepping men. 
They wondered why the people were so 
slow. They found out. Genial sloth was 
in the air. But man can do almost any- 
thing and a new energy came with the 
electric fan. 

The new business man of the South is 
now quite as executive in his methods as 
the man of the North. He has had prac- 
tically the same education, but complete 
commercial success means almost a com- 
plete elimination of the spirit of humor. 
It is said that the best business man in the 
world is the Scotch American. And the 
chances are that he never jokes until he is 



THE CHEVALIER OF INDUSTRY 85 

able to found libraries and endow col- 
leges. Humor is almost as dangerous in 
business as in Congress. The world has 
ever been inclined to regard dullness as 
depth. A bright remark has split more 
than one piece of presidential timber. The 
savage growls and the philosopher laughs, 
it is true; but in business, as well as in the 
United States Senate, stupidity is too often 
mistaken for attention to necessary de- 
tail. The Scot has wit, and often wit 
enough to hide it, as a business man in 
the South and a candidate for high office. 
Men who have done most for the material 
world have looked with a serious eye on 
life. 

The New Planter has put aside many a 
genial trait, perhaps, but his inherited 
sense of humor is still too strong wholly 



86 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

to be mastered and thrown into the gar- 
ret. To his house a visitor may come and 
not be invited to drink, not that he hesi- 
tates at the expense of the liquor, but be- 
cause the times have changed. It was 
not so with his grandfather. That old 
man has been known to sit on his veranda, 
impatiently waiting for " drinking com- 
pany " to come down the road. How often 
has he refused to be left after the julep 
had passed round and round. " Hold on, 
now, you ain't going to leave me in the 
lurch this way. I have been sitting here 
all day waiting for some one to come 
along, and I'm not going to turn you 
loose." The traveler might urge import- 
ant business. It would but provoke a smile 
and a renewed protest. " Business ! Why 
sir, I thought I was glad I met you. I 



THE CHEVALIER OF INDUSTRY 87 

thought you were a gentleman — and I be- 
lieve you are. Here, we'll have one more 
round. Hang it, man, this is Andrew 
Jackson's birthday." Once a traveler, al- 
most snatched from his horse, thus made 
answer when old Andrew was mentioned 
as a cause why he should stay and drink, 
honoring his natal day : " Yes, that may 
be, but I am an Englishman. Don't see 
why I should honor him." 

" What, don't see why? You ought to 
feel honored that you were thrashed 
by the greatest man that ever lived. He 
was paying you a marked distinction. He 
was giving you a reputation." 

The grandson, though he does not ques- 
tion the physical prowess of Old Hickory, 
has, by comparing him with greater 
minds, learned to look on his intellectual 



88 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

worth with a smile of reverential com- 
passion. He knows that the fight with old 
Nicholas Biddle displayed a fine determi- 
nation, but holds in question the result — 
the overflow of the United States Bank. 
He knows that the wildcat State banks 
that followed were evils most pernicious. 
His grandfather swore that they served as 
medicine to prevent a national sickness 
unto death. Like the old man, the grand- 
son believes not so much in the future as 
in the present; that real success means 
the immediate and not the ultimate en- 
joyment of whatever may be possessed. 
If thrift means a niggard greed to save 
a dollar, then he is not thrifty. Broaden- 
ing principles have proved to him that if 
money must be made, money must be 
spent. He remembers the philosophy of 



THE CHEVALIER OF INDUSTRY 89 

an old fellow still living. " Well, sir," 
said he, the philosopher, " our family was 
rather poor. We were taught to keep the 
best until the last. You know, with us 
hog meat was the staple of the stomach. 
It was like the gold reserve of a bank. 
We usually killed hogs enough to last us, 
and it was mother's economy that we 
should begin on the sides, then the shoul- 
ders, leaving the hams for the last. 
Many a longing look have I cast at a ham, 
when standing in the smokehouse to take 
down a bony shoulder. Well, one year we 
killed more hogs than ever before. This 
entailed a great deal of work before we 
could reach the hams. But there were five 
of us boys and we were industrious. The 
time wore wearily along. Winter passed 
and spring was peeping through greening 



90 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

boughs. One night mother said to us: 
* Well, boys, to-morrow morning for 
breakfast we begin on the hams.' It was 
joyous news ; but, sir, just at daylight the 
Yankees came, halted their wagons at our 
house and took every blessed ham. So, all 
through life, since then, I have made it a 
rule always to eat the hams first. The 
old saying, i Take the best first and you'll 
have the best all the time,' is true." 

And this is the spirit of the new busi- 
ness man of the South. In him there is 
still some trace of the gracious vagabond- 
age of the cavalier. Many a time has he 
been known to say, " Yes, if the war 
hadn't come on I'd been worth a good deal, 
as things were rated then. No telling how 
many negroes I should have owned. But 
for the country and the world at large it 



THE CHEVALIER OF INDUSTRY 91 

is a blessed thing the war ended as it did. 
Even my grandfather lived to realize it" 
As a lawyer the new man, along the 
Arkansas, is wholly different from his il- 
lustrious predecessor. The old-time law- 
yer, mounted on his horse, traveled like 
a star actor, going from triumph to tri- 
umph. Commercial law was beneath his 
notice. That branch of practice belonged 
to what was called the office lawyer. He 
was regarded as a clerk, knowing three 
times as much law as his sensational part- 
ner, but of what worth was it since he 
could not thrill a jury? The old orator- 
lawyer had a great library, the greatest- 
Shakespeare and the Bible. An apt quota- 
tion from Lear was sure to win a case. 
And from the Bible there was no appeal. 
Scourged with a text, the opposing law- 



92 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

yer bowed his head in defeat. Ridicule 
carried certain victory. Laugh a lawyer 
out of court and his case went with him. 
The judge joined in the merriment, and 
why not? In like manner had he won 
many a cause. Preparation did not mean 
the examination of papers but the framing 
of epigrammatic sentences. A dramatic 
sarcasm was more potent than a statute. 
The ear of the jury was set to catch the 
music of speech. A discord was a flaw in 
the argument. Readiness on the part of 
the advocate was proof, and truth lay in 
a burst of eloquence. A fellow who had 
been acquitted of the crime of horse-steal- 
ing had the presumption to pay attentions 
to the daughter of the lawyer who had 
saved him from the penitentiary. One 
night the lawyer went into the parlor and 




§ 



Scourged with a text the opposing lawyer bowed his 
head in defeat. 



THE CHEVALIER OF INDUSTRY 95 

said : " Look here, it won't be long before 
you steal another horse, and if you ever 
dare to speak to my daughter again I'll 
take the other side and shut you up for 
fifteen years. How dare you come to my 
house? " 

" Why, sir," stammered the thief, " you 
told the jury I was the most honorable 
man you ever met, and you urged it so 
strong I swear I believed it." 

"And, sir, at that moment you were, but 
the moment you got out of the courthouse 
you were a thief again." 

Out of this class of lawyers arose the 
Southern statesman. That is, the coun- 
try regarded him as a statesman. Con- 
gress and the public were his jury. Un- 
fortunately posterity has been his judge. 
With the classic past blazing in his mind 



96 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

he was so dazzled that he could not see 
a calamity soon to fall on his country. His 
successor of to-day may not be able to fire 
the mind ; school-readers may never know 
that he lived, but in truth he is more of 
a statesman. I know that this is heresy. 
I know that it has ever been popular to 
hold in irreverence the men of " these de- 
generate days." But in the South to-day 
there is many an unthought-of Congress- 
man who is doing more for his State than 
was ever accomplished by some of the 
monstrous orators of the past. 

The new lawyer of the South is a busi- 
ness man. He has not, perhaps, the 
tongue of silver. Mayhap about his in- 
strument of speech clogging fate has 
wound a string of yarn. But he knows the 
acts of the legislature. . With Shakespeare 




But the moment you got out of the courthouse you 
were a thief again. 



THE CHEVALIER OF INDUSTRY 99 

he may have some acquaintance — that is, 
his wife who belongs to a Shakespeare club 
may spout Hamlet and trickle Juliet, but 
as for himself, he is busy with some 
shrewd fellow's digest of the laws. It is 
not unlikely that in the colony his fore- 
fathers were slaves, that he is an emanci- 
pated white man. Years ago they said 
that nothing notable could come out of his 
class. If his grandfather had presumed 
to study law, the negroes even would 
have laughed at him. It is possible that 
with a scythe on a pole some one of his 
blood fought at Sedgemoor, and that by 
Jeffreys he was hanged, drawn and quar- 
tered. In the Southern army his people 
fought, and with as desperate bravery as 
has ever been recorded by the scribe of 
human valor, but why, he is not now able 



100 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

to determine. He had no slaves. There 
was no chance that he could ever possess 
one. And even if by some strange twist 
of events he might have made progress 
and become a slaveholding planter, the 
other planters by right of inherited privi- 
lege would have regarded him as an up- 
start. But to-day he is the successful law- 
yer of the South, a business man. 

Under the old conditions a certain boy 
would not have played with him. Now 
he is that " boy's " business adviser. And 
was his grandfather, like the old planter, 
of a humorous turn? He was, but in a 
way. His fun was as sallow as his com- 
plexion. His jokes were as lank as his 
mouse-colored hair. 

Tradition had told him of suffering. 
His religion was not lightsome, such as 



THE CHEVALIER OF INDUSTRY 101 

the illumined creed of the old planter. It 
was not the gay formula of conduct 
brought to America by the younger son. 
It was the grim precept of a determined 
conscience, God-strengthened to endure a 
merciless torture. 

When banished they would have per- 
mitted him to choose New England, but 
they knew that there he would meet his 
neighbors, brothers in faith and in con- 
science. There were men in New Eng- 
land who doubtless might have bought 
him, men not of his faith; but there the 
pine woods were full of sympathy for his 
creed, severe for others but fitting him as 
snugly as the woolly skin does the sheep. 

Time brings to all men opportunity. To 
the Cracker's grandson it came, slow in- 
deed of foot, but on it came apace, limping 



102 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

down the dusty road. He did not know 
it, but he had manfully fought against 
his own emancipation. In stagnation a 
civil calm may hold a humble but a grasp- 
ing mind, while in disturbance that mind 
may find the chance to vault above the 
bonds that held it. The hated bayonet 
brought liberty. The revolution which 
stripped the Planter, clothed the Cracker 
with opportunity. The Carpetbagger's 
free school stretched through the forest 
of ignorance a road for him. There he 
was not to con the mettled classics of use- 
less grace, of Trojan wars and amorous 
poets subsidized by lordly Romans, but 
shrewdly to learn and to count the spots 
on the noonday sun of the present. The 
mental vigor of many a youth has been 
wasted thin with the grappling of ques- 



THE CHEVALIER OF INDUSTRY 103 

tions, moss-grown and with no outcome. 
Attenuated speculation has made many a 
mind " go stale " for the active uses of this 
latter day; the bubbles of iridescent the- 
ories have many a time exploded in use- 
lessness; and we who, in the crumbling 
house, hugged Plato close without under- 
standing, have come to know that in prac- 
tical life the arithmetic is mightier than 
the Iliad. In this latter school the new 
business man of the South has been edu- 
cated. He had not wisely chosen, the 
mossbacks said, but amid the hummings 
of his numerous spindles, glancing at the 
news of the day, he has seen that Oxford 
seriously has discussed the abolition of 
compulsory Greek. 

Let us old-timers think sweet the day 
gone by; if we so desire, let us cherish 



104 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

Attic salt and call it the pepper of hot 
accomplishment, but let us not lose sight 
of the truth that the present and the future 
are in the keeping and the moulding of 
the practical man. In the years to come 
the doer will be prized more than the 
scholar. If it be not to illumine the future, 
the past is worthless. Histories that do 
not teach are of no account. Life has 
resolved itself into a business, and the 
sloth, be he ever so intellectual, is in the 
way. In the North this was learned early. 

In the South it has of late arisen slowly 
as a fact that cannot be gainsaid. 

Among the old planters there were 
many ignorant men. With them the 
negro cabin was greater than the library. 
But the influential were men of cultiva- 
tion. They knew that the soldiers of Al- 



THE CHEVALIER OF INDUSTRY 105 

cibiades refused to muster with " Thrasyl- 
lus his men, because they had been foiled," 
but they did not know what plants were 
best for certain soil. The new planter 
knows this. In a laboratory he has es- 
timated the secret strengths of his ancient 
fields. He has realized that knowledge 
really is power. When his grandfather's 
fields were worn he turned them out, to be 
forest again in sassafras and persimmon. 
But now, from the laboratory there comes 
the voice of chemistry and the discarded 
fields are reclaimed. And with all this our 
country is more closely knitted together. 
Business speaks a universal tongue. It 
has no local prejudices. The factory 
knows all verbs and tenses. Commerce 
discovered America. Union of interests 
has made the Union a solid fact. A past 



106 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

age saw the South a dominant force in 
oratory. A coming age will see it supreme 
as a material force. Unto the South is 
gathering the skill of New England. The 
country is shifting ends. On the an- 
cestral ground of ancient struggle, where 
the stout old Puritan primed his firelock, 
the alien has settled, with a different re- 
ligion and speaking a different tongue. 
Where the early poet trod, the pine bush 
grows again, and to the woods comes 
back the protected deer. Far to the West 
are scattered the children of these honored 
homes, and to the South has gone many a 
son to live in brotherhood with him who, 
years ago, would have been his bitter 
enemy. 



THE NEW YORK BUSINESS MAN. 



The countryman believes that the great 
creative forces of New York came from 
the country. In his opinion the native is 
a little fellow with a neck so small as to 
make his head appear too large. The lit- 
tle neck is stiff with conscious and con- 
tented superiority, and the head that seems 
so large is none too big for crowding con- 
ceits and jostling vanities. The country- 
man is broad in his prejudices; the little 
New Yorker is narrow in his dislikes. 

With a blusterous air of pride the Chi- 
cago man will tell you where he lives, but 
the New York man seeks silently to show 
you. Indeed, he fancies that every one 
107 



108 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

must know by looking at him. He does 
not essay to know more than other men, 
but to be more. Knowledge is commend- 
able if it should happen to live in New 
York. If not, it is provincial and is to 
be tolerated with a cool smile. In profess- 
ing ignorance of the country at large there 
is a sort of wisdom, and to sneer at the 
West is culture. Is not this the most un- 
provoked of all treason? Yes, but the 
barbarian was permitted to speak his 
opinion of Rome. To the real man of the 
world and not to the average man of a 
small island, to the man who reads the 
world's books and who knows that the 
fleeting mortal is but a shadow, soon to 
be merged into the great shade of eternal 
night, to this estimator of life's great noth- 
ing communities lend but small import- 




. . to sneer at the West is culture 



THE NEW YORK BUSINESS MAN 111 

ance to the individual. Out of the desert 
came Gautama, not out of a Babylon ; and 
the philosophy of Greece was not born in 
Athens, but in a Greek colony that had 
reared its modest head within the shadow 
of the pyramids. 

Ignorance of a foreign country is never 
reconciled with a sort of superiority of 
caste, but ignorance of America is often 
viewed with a kind of complimentary sur- 
prise. 

Londoner (in New York) to New 
Yorker: I understand that America 
is getting to be a very oreat coun- 
try. 

New Yorker: Aw, seems I have 
heard something about it, but really 
cawn't say. 

The other cities of America may be col- 
leges, but New York is the university. Its 



112 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

graduates are self-possessed. The uni- 
versity teaches restraint, the suppression 
of enthusiasm, and this is the New Yorker. 
" Is he a man of cultivation? " was asked 
at a dinner-party. And the answer was 
satisfactory: "Cultivation! He has 
lived in New York twenty years." 

To the New Yorker the Westerner may 
take off his soft hat, not in awe as the 
recipient of this courtesy supposes, but be- 
cause he has been told that it is polite. 
Yes, takes off his slouch hat in deference 
to the plug, but in this civility there is more 
of enmity than of reverence. I remember 
hearing a man of affairs in the West de- 
clare that he never met a New Yorker 
that he did not feel in some way not to be 
explained that he was in the presence of 
an enemy. Even a New York drummer, 



THE NEW YORK BUSINESS MAN 113 

said he, seeks to " pity " you into buying 
his goods. Other cities have their terri- 
tories, but all territories belong to New 
York. 

The philosophical idea of empire was 
that to be homogeneous it must extend 
from east to west. In this way fewer race 
prejudices are encountered than if the em- 
pire should stretch from north to south. 
But in this the New York man has re- 
versed the ancient truth. He is more 
courteous with the Southerner than with 
the Westerner, though the West was his 
brother during the Civil War. New York 
society has never accepted a leader from 
the West. But a marshal of the Four 
Hundred was a Southerner. This has a 
cause, and the cause lies in the fact that 
the South has age. And besides, the 



114 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

Southerner's talk is soft. He does not dis- 
turb a drawing-room with a Western " r." 
He does not talk through a nose frozen 
in a prairie blizzard. He may not say any- 
thing when he talks, but to the New 
Yorker this is a conversational virtue. 
He says, " Oh, come now, don't be so rude 
as to spring an idea! Let us be gentle- 
men." Old Sam Johnson said that the 
most nearly perfect gentleman was he who 
bore upon him the mark of no profession, 
and in New York the tradesman has come 
near to acquiring this distinction. In 
other cities they may not talk business in 
the drawing-room, but they look business 
and they keep you constantly afraid that 
you are to be requested to buy something. 
You are in luck if you escape being dunned 
for something you already owe. But in 



THE NEW YORK BUSINESS MAN 115 

New York gentility holds in front of you 
the shield of her culture and her refine- 
ment and you are safe. " I was in 
New York to see about some obliga- 
tions that had begun to threaten my 
commercial existence/' said a man 
from Nebraska, " and greatly to my 
surprise was invited out. I reckon it 
was because I owed so much. Well, at 
several receptions I met the men I owed 
but they didn't say a word about it. For 
a time I dodged them, on the stairway and 
in the hall — never like to meet a man I 
owe — but they smiled so genially and so 
gracefully shook hands that I said to my- 
self : ' Hanged if they haven't forgot it. 
There is no use in my staying here.' I 
thought, however, that I'd better make 
sure, so at the dinner-table I remarked to 



116 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

the broad-shirted man on my right that I 
hadn't forgotten our little financial affair 
and he looked surprised. ' Forgotten it 
as sure as I live,' said I. ' It is a fact that 
these worthy gentlemen don't care for any- 
thing but for culture and society.' So I 
went home and three days afterward they 
closed me out. I thought then, and I 
think now, that it is rather an odd way 
of doing business." 

It is too much to expect that the per- 
fectly poised man should be unconscious 
of his graces. It is the plow horse that 
hangs his head. The race horse is self- 
conscious ; the man of mettle feels it. No 
man ever surprised himself with his own 
bravery, though perhaps we all of us have 
been surprised by sudden and unlooked 
for fear. The practice of constant polite- 



THE NEW YORK BUSINESS MAN 117 

ness, the polish of action, lends a certain 
dignity to the mind, and this is one of the 
characteristics of the New York man. 
Like the disciplined soldier he is never 
found off his guard. Or is it that he be- 
lieves so thoroughly in himself as to at- 
tribute virtue to his failings and his mis- 
takes ? It has been observed that the most 
cultivated and refined man, placed under 
certain stress, is, after all, but shortly re- 
moved from barbarism. Royer Collard 
said that wisdom consisted in tracing ig- 
norance as far back as possible. If gen- 
tility consisted in tracing politeness as far 
back as possible the New Yorker would 
be forced to take off his hat to the Vir- 
ginian, with his slow and old-fashioned 
talk, with his mind fired only by memory 
of the past. While the New Yorker was 



118 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

jabbering the harsh Dutch of shrewd bar- 
gain, the James River man, in his barge 
rowed by slaves, in silken hose and ruffles, 
graced with his polite tongue the language 
of Dryden and playfully discussed the 
latest gossip that slowly on shipboard had 
sailed from the court of Charles I. But 
even respectability must be progressive, 
and the spirit that can woo trade, can, 
after a time, win fair woman and establish 
an aristocratic family. In vast wealth 
there must be respectability, and it is the 
New Yorker's money rather than his 
moral worth that makes him feel supreme. 
The fact is that he is not particularly 
moral. In this respect he cannot compare 
favorably with the average householder 
of Cheyenne. 

Mind you, this is not merely an estimate 



THE NEW YORK BUSINESS MAN 119 

of my own, but is gathered from the spirit 
in which the New Yorker is held through- 
out the Western country. His life is too 
fitful and too feverish wholly to be sound. 
He drinks too much champagne, and this 
is as bad for the morals and worse for the 
body than the reddest liquor that ever bab- 
bled from a mountain " jimmyjohn." He 
may surprise you with an athletic spurt, 
but he is not a man of endurance ; his blood 
is anaemic and he soon wears out. He im- 
presses you with having been reared in 
the shade, a sprout in the cellar of life. 
He has not the American's abiding sense 
of humor, but like the Frenchman, who 
can never comprehend the word humor- 
ous, he has a sort of wit, a gleaming dia- 
mond dust. His limitations in the matter 
of character-drawing render him an in- 



120 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

different story-teller. But when the 
stories have been told, laughed over and 
forgotten, his salad is remembered. He 
is not a bad sort of a friend if once he 
succeeds in committing you to memory, 
and forgives a debt with as much magna- 
nimity as he forgets an obligation. " In 
the mind of the average Englishman, Eng- 
land is great not because she really is but 
because she produced him," remarked a 
wise old British growler. And New York 
is great because she produced the New 
Yorker. He does not meet a stranger out 
at the toll-gate and say, " Well, sir, what 
do you think of our town ? " He declares 
that this would be like Chicago. The fact 
is that he cares not for what an American 
thinks of his town, but if some little duke 
should of his own accord speak of the 



THE NEW YORK BUSINESS MAN 121 

great majesty of the mighty burgh, he has 
it printed in his newspapers. He talks of 
provincialism, but is himself the most pro- 
vincial man in America. No man without 
travel was ever able to overcome the effect 
of having been reared on an island. The 
Englishman may know more but he is not 
so broad as the Russian. As a viewer of 
the affairs of the nation, the New Yorker 
has not so comprehensive a sweep as the 
Philadelphian. The mayor of New York 
means more than the president of the Re- 
public, and the native Knickerbocker can- 
not rnderstand why the entire country 
does not regard it in that light. What 
are politics but the affairs of New York? 
What is the embodiment of political econ- 
omy but the custom house of Gotham? 
What is money but the golden blood that 



122 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

flows through the veins of Wall Street? 
Where lies prosperity — in the grain fields, 
the smiling meadows where the cattle 
graze ? No, along the woe-worn stones of 
Misery's Alley. Here arise the winds 
of distress, the country's colic ; here there 
is never a calm, for human greed is never 
satisfied. But in this black gulch, if we 
may believe the echoes from the caverns of 
despair, a new order of gentleman is de- 
veloped. 

The South accepts him as a relentless 
force in kid gloves, and the West looks 
upon him at times with mortal hatred and 
then with a sort of worshipful awe; and 
that great financial queen bee, the Treas- 
urer of the United States, appears honored 
by his society and inspired by his con- 
fidence. 



THE NEW YORK BUSINESS MAN 123 

To say, " Mr. Treasurer, I have fright- 
ened your country to the crumbling verge 
of a crisis, and now if you want to keep 
out of straits help me out," is a wise 
financial warning. As a phase of the 
many-sided New York man he is interest- 
ing, but is he a business man? He may 
think so, and the West, which he so mer- 
cilessly crushes on wheel and in boot and 
keeps during months at a time hung high 
up by the purple thumbs — the West may 
believe so, but by all the precepts of com- 
merce and by all the rules governing the 
care that must be taken in the turning of 
a card, he is a gambler. Ah, but his gam- 
bling is so magnificent as to attain the 
height of most astute generalship. In his 
notice of us, poor shiners of pennies, there 
is generous condescension, and we accept 



124 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

his act of robbery as the sincerest flattery. 
You — of the West, understand — are 
waiting for a chance to get at him. And 
when that chance comes along, as it does 
about every four years, you are revenge- 
fully thankful enough to put your arms 
around the blue-skinned neck of haggish 
Fate and upon her dried peas-pod lips im- 
plant a rhapsody of kisses. Ugh ! That's 
what you say in your cool contemplation 
of the act ; it is what you always say ex- 
cept on certain occasions when you are 
bartering with the old hag, when an entire 
beet-sugar crop is about to be employed in 
the sweetening of your revenge. Is it not 
a glory, a chance to snatch this man's po- 
litical scalp? In the passion of truth's 
inspired blank verse, written with oozy 
labor and committed to the mind after 



THE NEW YORK BUSINESS MAN 125 

many midnights of despair — boldly deliv- 
ered at the mule-colt show — you tell Amer- 
ica that it is time to toss the Wall Street 
man into the air and to let him come down 
the best way he can. As a New Yorker 
he has shown his indifference to the coun- 
try of Kit Carson, and as an emphasis of 
all other offenses the Wall Streeter has 
shown that his regard for the land of 
Washington is estimated upon the basis of 
what it annually yields to him. 

The poet thought that the greatest study 
of mankind was man. Previously man 
had arraigned himself for scrutiny, and 
since then, of course, his nature has been 
constantly kept under the microscope. 
But the great universities are compelled 
to acknowledge that in him they can find 
nothing new. That he has reached the 



126 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

noontide of " degenerate development " 
is believed of the East by the West, not 
indeed by the educated or the thoughtful, 
but by him who fancies that all wisdom 
lies in a sort of keenness of observation, 
and that to discover the first symptoms of 
bots in a horse is of greater service to hu- 
manity than the discovery of wireless 
telegraphy. The " cultivated " ignorance 
of the New York man and the Western 
ruralite's inspired lack of thought may 
blend one of these days and bring forth a 
surprising harmony. In mere words and 
dress for occasion, America, accounting 
for size, is the most homogeneous of all 
countries, and yet in antagonistic traits of 
character it is most cat-and-doggish, with 
the soft mew of the Boston man heard be- 
tween. The native Westerner has his 



THE NEW YORK BUSINESS MAN 127 

opinion of the Bostonian. It is this : He 
will pull your last tooth with frost-cov- 
ered forceps. " Here," cries the sufferer, 
" warm that iron." " I beg your pardon, 
sir, but we have only one more to pull." 
With his Ancient and Honorable Artil- 
lery the Boston man ceased to be an Am- 
erican so many years ago that the West- 
erner remembers him only as a refined 
echo. Quiet of manner, with a sort of 
musical mouth-smack expressive of his 
appreciation of the world's highest grade 
of pie, the Boston man, unlike the New 
Yorker, has ever been ready to talk. This 
pleases the Westerner. He would rather 
be called a liar, would rather it were 
proved on him, than to suffer the Gotham- 
ite's contempt of silence. 

Ah, and when by some stroke of for- 



128 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

tune the Westerner moves into new New 
York and, as nearly as alien flesh and 
blood can, becomes a New Yorker, he re- 
cants in softened tones and attempts with 
easy gesture to show you where he is 
from. But after all, it is not by gesture 
and neither is it by word that the New 
Yorker so charmingly illustrates the re- 
fined power of his town. It is by a spir- 
itual essence. And this essence can no 
more be set forth in language than with 
a reporter's notebook you could catch the 
soliloquy of an Aeolian harp. 



THE PUGET SOUND MAN 



A new atmosphere makes a new man. 
Out of the old inductive systems of com- 
merce may arise a new deduction of trade. 
Out of a great hurry and an apparently 
impotent rush there may come a new 
force, and a sort of physical confusion 
may prove the mother of scientific enter- 
prise. Adventure discovers, restlessness 
peoples and industry develops a commun- 
ity. But every community has a distinct- 
ive soul and this seems to be of chance 
creation. The Western mining camp, 
born in a night at the close of a long and 
thirsty journey, was a place of eagerness 

and of thirst for strong waters. Its 
129 



130 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

builders brought along with them the 
nomadic soul of the wilds, and thus in 
atmosphere one mining town was much 
like another. Fanciful pens presented it 
to romance and to a poetry that snapped 
with audacity ; the dramatist exaggerated 
exaggeration and put it upon the stage, 
and thus, without the trouble of taking a 
trip from home, the East became inti- 
mately acquainted with the far West. 
But many miles farther toward the sun- 
set there is a domain which the Easterner 
has not had the opportunity to become 
familiar with in two hours' time. He 
could do it if the opportunity were of- 
fered; he could carry home with him a 
grease-painted typification of a thing that 
never existed and feel, not indeed that he 
had been rewarded for his time, but that 



THE PUGET SOUND MAN 131 

upon his mind had been foisted a new 
human being. This typification gives him 
the chance afterward, upon visiting the 
country in question, to cry his astonish- 
ment at beholding a marble temple dedi- 
cated to dramatic art. If too reserved to 
be surprised at this, he has been wont to 
hold back his exclamation as a startled 
tribute to a man in a dress suit. In mind 
I hold the picture of one of the most 
charming territories of the Western 
World — the Puget Sound country. 
About the new community, regardless of 
its beauties, there is a sort of rawness. 
The air may be soft and the sky a scene 
shifted from Italy, but the lack of tradi- 
tion and of history, the fact that the blood 
of knighted men has not consecrated the 
rocks, all combine to deny a soul-inspiring 



132 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

mellowness. The guide may tell you that 
on yonder knoll the great Chief Panther 
Paw bit off the head of a live rattlesnake 
to prove his love for a coppery maiden 
arrayed in the hide of a wildcat, but this 
does not suffice. We want Scott instead 
of Cooper. The flint arrow-head may be 
a thousand years older, but we demand 
the steel lance. In the Puget Sound 
country, however, there is no rawness. 
The air is so soft, so dreamy; away off 
yonder behind the purple fog there is 
such mystery that the imagination feeds 
upon delicious sweets. Here is a forest 
that would make the ancient Black Forest 
look white. Here is a long, caped and 
coved ocean lake which travelers declare 
makes all other lakes look rude. 

From a dream you are almost awakened 



THE PUGET SOUND MAN 133 

by a soft and gentle rain, but you are told 
not to be alarmed, that it will not wet you. 
In the air there is wine and the rain is 
extra dry. If in the street of some new 
village you complain of the mud a man 
may say to you : " Maybe you haven't 
examined this mud. Why, a shovelful of 
it will raise more stuff than a whole coun- 
ty on the Atlantic Coast." 

Into this country the land-boomer came, 
and, standing on a stump, auctioned off 
the world. There was no gold, no silver, 
and the timber was so enormous and so 
thick upon the ground that to clear an 
acre cost two hundred dollars, but the 
newcomer, with no idea as to how he was 
going to make a living, proceeded to buy 
land. " What are you going to do with 
it?" "Sell it." "Then what?" " Buy it 



134 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

back again." They didn't lay out towns, 
but cities. Some Jim Hill of a man, meet- 
ing an acquaintance, would say : " Wish 
you would build me a city." 

"How big?" 

" Well, about fifty thousand inhabit- 
ants." 

Of course this does not nor can it ever 
last. For every town there must be a 
why. It is easier to maintain a flower 
garden through the blasts of winter than 
to keep up a city that has no cause for 
being there. Behind the town hall there 
must be the farm, the mine and the 
logging camp. Here was only the logging 
camp. " Don't worry," cried the auc- 
tioneer, standing on the stump. " The 
Orient belongs to us. Let us build ships." 
And thev did. It seemed that all of the 



THE PUGET SOUND MAN 135 

old laws were about to be overturned. 
" Build the towns and the country will 
take care of itself," was a sort of motto. 
But one day, while they were carrying 
forward this new colonization theory, 
there came a frightful something gallop- 
ing across the continent. It was the panic 
of ninety-three. In its snort was the 
blasting of hope and in its red eye was 
commercial death. Values shriveled. 
Banks crumbled. And then toward the 
East whence had come that frightful 
monster, rip-snorting death, there scram- 
bled, breathless and with lolling tongue, 
a wolf. It was capital. And so, upon 
the boom there grew a poetic moss, as 
soft as the velvet on the horns of a young 
deer; gentle rain fell where blossomed 



136 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

a flower, the maiden heart, and in the 
breeze it beat beneath the purple mist. 

Men of action ran away. The dreamer 
remained. But the world's mighty muscle 
is but a force set in motion by a dream, 
and the philosophy that gives moral life 
to teeming nations arose out of a vision. 
In the theory of a Taine this boom and 
this calamity were but natural conditions 
incident to the development of a new man. 
In the mind of that mysterious Cause 
which produces so plain an effect this may 
not have been a crystallized contempla- 
tion, but it is true that to the commercial 
world a new character was given — the 
business man of Seattle. In the Middle 
West all material progress seemed to 
have been inductive, built upon swift ex- 
perience. Thought was incident to ac- 



THE PUGET SOUND MAN 137 

tion. Technical training was for those 
who wished to luxuriate rather than to 
achieve. The university was a hot-house 
of thought. But with the Seattle man it 
was somewhat different. Largely was he 
an athlete from the universities of the 
East and of the South. What others had 
learned by statistics and comparison he 
seemed to know by the instincts of deduc- 
tion. Upon many a philosophy the elec- 
tric light of to-day casts a dark shadow, 
and it was a noon-time glare that kept 
him from being a poet. Near the end of 
a materialistic century he was forced to 
be practical. But his Plato had taught 
him to be self-contained and from his 
Yankee sire he had inherited shrewdness. 
The man who knows a thousand theories 
and one fact is stronger than the man 



138 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

who knows simply the one fact. At the 
reunion of a fraternity he tipped his glass 
to a Greek letter and laid claim to Japan 
as a part of his natural territory. About 
him were men of shrewdness rather than 
of educated comprehension, sprinting 
hustlers and delving economists, but dom- 
inating as rightly directed learning must 
ever dominate, his was the true spirit and 
the atmosphere of the town. At the edge 
of one continent and looking across the 
sea towards another, he was expansive. 
To him there was nothing local. All of 
his surroundings served but to crown the 
apex of the world. And the world, look- 
ing toward a new discovery, saw him in 
a dazzling light, and the gold fields of 
Alaska became the playground of his 
speculative fancy. His shantytown, re- 



THE PUGET SOUND MAN 139 
duced to ashes, arose in riveted steel. At 
the time of the gold discovery the great 
ships that sailed from the Sound belonged 
to another city, but he chartered them, 
compelled them to outfit in his city, and 
said to the Associated Press, " Send your 
dispatches from here." When miners re- 
turned with gold in buckskins he said, 
" Stop and invest here." 

In enterprise looking toward substantial 
development the town is as bold as a 
Raleigh or a Drake. Not long ago the 
Government was to receive bids for the 
building of the battleship Nebraska. A 
Seattle shipbuilder went to Washington. 
Shortly afterward he telegraphed to the 
editor of a Seattle newspaper : " Can get 
the contract but shall lose one hundred 
thousand dollars." The editor went out 



140 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

among the merchants. He talked to a 
man on the corner and at noon dropped 
into the University Club. And that after- 
noon he telegraphed to the contractor: 
" Take the contract. We will make good 
the one hundred thousand." The contract 
was taken and now they are building the 
ship. 

" This great enterprise is all very 
well/' said a visitor. " But how long do 
you think you can keep it up ? Across the 
Cascades are the grain fields and your 
hops grow in the valleys, but what is your 
town based upon? " 

" Do you see that forest, the densest 
in the world? Is there not gold in lum- 
ber?" 

" Yes, but the saw soon eats up a forest. 



THE PUGET SOUND MAN 141 

What are you going to do when the trees 
are gone? Wait for more to grow? " 

" My dear sir, this country is so pro- 
ductive that we don't have to wait for 
things to grow. When a tree falls some- 
thing else comes up. And when all of 
our resources shall have been exhausted 
we'll thrive on enterprise." 

But his resources are no more to become 
exhausted than the American continent 
is to become barren. He is an empire 
builder and could live even if shut off .. 
from the rest of the world. Unlike the 
farmer on the prairies of Iowa and Illi- 
nois, he does not revere the East. His 
is not a banishment but an emancipation. 
He has two measures of time, one dating 
from the panic and the other from the 
day when he shook off the manacles of 



142 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

an older and more constrained civilization. 
I recall an oldish man who once had 
served as mayor of the town. " Every 
morning upon getting out of bed/' he 
remarked, " I thank God that I am no 
longer compelled to live in the East." 
And he meant it. An Englishman in the 
consular service said: "When my time 
is out I am not going back to England. 
They say that this atmosphere makes all 
men liars, and I don't know who enjoys 
himself more than a liar. The climate, 
the vines, the mutton — all English. It is 
unlike any other part of America. And 
it is going to produce a marvelous race 
of people. On the dry plains the women 
have complexions like sandpaper. But 
out here in this moist air, look at the face 



THE PUGET SOUND MAN 143 

of every woman you meet: A rose in 
bloom." 

The Seattle man is possessed of an 
" unself " egotism. His vanitv lies not in 
himself but in his country, his climate and 
his soil. When he visits Chicago and 
talks about his enterprise and the commer- 
cial victories of his city he is believed, but 
heads are shaken when he begins to talk 
about his country. Ask him for a plain 
statement of fact and he plunges into a 
panegyric. Inquire as to the thermome- 
ter and he sails aloft in a balloon of lyric 
exultation. In his town it is hard to pin 
him down to the acknowledgment of an 
unpleasant truth. " But don't you think 
it rains too much? " " Our strawberries 
are as big as a teacup." " Is it always 
this foggy?" "Our roses are the finest 



144 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

in the world." It reminds one of Macau- 
lay's arraignment of Charles I. " He was 
accused of having violated his coronation 
oath, and they replied that he was true to 
his wife." " You have a beautiful body 
of water here." " Yes; but you ought to 
have seen it before the panic." And that 
is one of the reasons why he does not re- 
vere the East — the panic. New York 
reached forth her delicate but merciless 
hand, turned his banks upside down, 
emptied out his money and scattered it 
along the curbstones of Wall Street. But 
in a measure he has forgiven the outrage. 
It was bad, but not so bad as if his climate 
had been assailed. 

And that climate is marvelous. It has 
compelled the Southerner to merge his 
traditions into a boast for the State of 



THE PUGET SOUND MAN 145 

Washington. " I used to be from one of 
the best families of Virginia/' said a 
man, " but I have recovered from all that 
sort of thing. I date my real birth from 
the time I struck Puget Sound. Let me 
show you a house that would just suit you. 
You'd better buy in time, for it won't be 
long before everybody'll be coming out 
here." " Yes, a wonderful country and 
a great city, but so far away, you know." 
" So far away from where ? From the 
place where the Puritans landed and came 
nigh starving to death? But it's no 
farther from Plymouth Rock than Ply- 
mouth Rock is from Puget Sound." 
" But my people all live in the East." 
" Well, that's their misfortune." Once 
in a while a man encounters an argument 
that he cannot answer. 



146 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

But the business man of Seattle has not 
that about him which in the suddenly rich 
of the Middle West is so offensive to the 
East. If he likes to hear himself talk it 
is not of what he himself has done. It is 
of what his country is going to do, and we, 
the narrow-minded, stand ready to for- 
give a man whose bragging is broad 
enough to embrace a sort of patriotism. 
And above all, it is refreshing to meet a 
man whom new forces and new aspira- 
tions have created anew. Even the most 
polished imitator is tiresome. There is 
genius in a crude originality. The Puget 
Sound man is not an imitator and he is 
original without being crude. Nor does 
he wait for foreign approval in order that 
he may properly estimate the literary 
worth of home talent. " Have you read 




a man whose bragging is broad enough to embrace 
a sort of patriotism. 



THE PUGET SOUND MAN 149 

Brown's poem ? " " Is it well spoken of by 
the critic? " " Oh, I don't know anything 
about that. But it was written here on 
the Sound." Boston is not so indepen- 
dent. Hawthorne was beautiful in Eng- 
land before he became beautiful at home. 
And with all the rush and the loud ham- 
mering of this new town there is a rest- 
fulness, and moreover, contentment, rare- 
ly found in America. There is great 
energy, but the air is softened by a con- 
tinuous breath blown from the Orient. 
Not all of the people are making money; 
some of them are poor indeed, but there 
is an ever-ready way to divert one from 
the telling of a hard-luck story. Speak to 
him of the country. " I am out of work 
and broke and don't know what I shall 
do," said a man as he stood looking out 



150 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

over the Sound, " but I ought to congrat- 
ulate myself. I am here." There is no 
way to dampen the enthusiasm of such 
men. Throw a wet blanket at them and 
its falls warm and comforting. 



AFTER THE WAR. 



If War was the chivalry of American 
manhood, Reconstruction was the dark 
age of American politics. In remote his- 
tory, no death of king, no revolution 
could have brought a change more marked 
with differences from the former state. 
The old planter sat on his veranda as of 
yore, but he looked not out over a 
monarchy of cotton nodding its plumes. 
He saw his gullied fields bush-grown, sul- 
len in moody ruin, sarcastic with brier and 
with thorn antagonistic. By war's fol- 
lowers his walnut grove had been cut 
down, made into furniture for the rich of 
foreign lands or wastefully turned into a 

!5i 



152 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

stockade to protect the cheap pine of a 
railroad bridge. War digs as well as 
marches; Caesar's Tenth Legion had 
shovels, and the spade had turned the 
channel of the river so that now between 
the house and the steamboat landing 
there was a waste of sand. But over all 
this desolation a bird sang — the soaring 
lark of the planter's humor. This was an 
inheritance that nothing could blast. 
Over it the briers might grow, but on the 
briers there were flowers. " Why do you 
laugh? " some one inquired of him. " To 
keep from weeping," was his answer. 

The capper of his joke was the Freed- 
man's Bureau. The negro, remembering 
the stripes inflicted by the Northern over- 
seer, now demanded politeness of the 
planter, and, failing to receive it, lodged 



AFTER THE WAR 153 

a complaint. The Bureau master was 
perhaps a political soldier of fortune. 
The chances were that he never saw the 
front until it turned to come marching 
back. He wore the garb of the Nation, 
but he was in most instances the bawd of 
justice. He wanted money. And a few 
dollars were sometimes known to silence 
him even when the negro had cause to 
complain against the sudden fury of his 
former master. Looking back now, there 
arises a marvel that there was not more 
of the bloodshed of revenge. As a race 
the negro is not revengeful. Arrayed in 
his first store clothes of freedom, with 
the false goddess of his liberty, the ballot- 
box, before him — like the rest of us fool- 
ishly fond mortals, he revered the past, 
his youth. When left to himself, without 



154 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

the meddling and pernicious influence of 
the alien white, he joked with his old mas- 
ter and laughed over the time when they 
were boys together. Had it not been for 
the hasty ballot they would have always 
remained friends. But from the slave to 
the citizen was too exciting a transition. 
" We ain't gwine to be buried no mo' in 
boxes w'en we dies/' said an old negro, 
voicing the sentiment of his people. 
" We'se gwine be buried in deze yere 
Italic cases." And the planter laughed. 
It was a genuine negro estimate of his 
new degree. One old " Guinea nigger " 
who had just buried his wife thus proudly 
addressed a friend : " I tell yer dar wa'n't 
no 'oman better buried den she wuz. Dat 
coffin, made outen iron an' all slicked ober, 



AFTER THE WAR 157 

cost me two bales o' cotton. I neber did 
'joy myse'f so much at ary fune'l." 

But not for long were the fields to re- 
main bush-grown. For a time the ne- 
groes thought that freedom meant the 
privilege of living without work, but as 
soon as the Government began to with- 
draw its rations, the new citizen discov- 
ered that he had to work. He owned no 
land, and the white brother's promise of 
forty acres and a mule fell through ; elec- 
tions were not frequent enough to supply 
him with money. So he had to turn to 
the planter. The disfranchised land- 
owner employed the citizen. Politics had 
been the poetry of the old planter's life. 
The flowering vine of political contest had 
formed the wreath about the brows of his 
community's greatest men. And now the 



158 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

remembrance was not a vine but a patch 
of stinging nettles. In the wildest of his 
visions, unhealthful nightmares of the 
past, he might have seen the ultimate 
triumph of the abolitionist. The great 
Wesley, revered in the South, had watered 
the plant if he had not planted the seed; 
the eagle-screaming Clay had shrilled his 
notes of gradual emancipation. But what 
witch could have pictured the time when 
the white man should sit politically dumb 
and the negro shout his choice in the bnl- 
lot-box ? 

It was an odd sight, an early election 
following the war. From town came a 
Carpetbagger with the names of officers 
and legislators to be elected. A follower 
of the army, one who had bought for al- 
most nothing the hides of slaughtered 



AFTER THE WAR 159 

steers, with never in his commercial nos- 
trils a sniff of gunpowder, was to repre- 
sent in the Legislature a county which he 
had never seen. And if there were in that 
county a hint of objection, like a flight of 
blackbirds down came the negro militia. 
On his veranda, now down at the corners 
and with shotten roof, the planter sat, 
watching the black horde profaning the 
sunlight with the gleam of their unlawful 
bayonets, marching to coerce the owner of 
a kingdom, whose fibrous product had set 
humming the spindles of Manchester. He 
looked toward the deer horns which were 
in the gone time wont to hold his gun 
above the door. But the gun was not 
there. Some negro boy had it, hunting 
rabbits in the fields. In the van he saw a 
lusty buck, old Hannah's child, she who 



160 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

used to sing while she baked her ginger 
cakes and glazed them resplendent with 
the white of an egg. Ah, but the rascal 
still had within him a moiety of respect, 
for lifting his soldier cap he murmured, 
" Marster." To the old man's eye this 
brought a tear. Softly as of yore came the 
evening's shade, when steamboats had 
been used to blow their deep-toned notes, 
but now there was the negro militia's 
bugle-call far down the desolated road. 
The result of the election was announced 
before the returns were in. The hide-and- 
tallow man was elected, and resignedly he 
began to prepare himself to represent the 
sovereign people — began to roll up his 
sleeve to thrust his arm up to the elbow 
into the treasury. How faithful he was 
to his " trust " ! How zealous for recon- 



AFTER THE WAR 161 

struction and how patriotically crushed 
when Grant, learning the truth, command- 
ed him to sneak back into his native ob- 
scurity. 

But the steamboat came and off stepped 
the man with the mortgage. He was from 
New Orleans, as had come his predeces- 
sor, but in his walk there was a dangerous 
briskness; his pockets were too bulging 
with papers and his talk was too quick and 
" unsouthern." He was met cordially and 
invited to a seat upon the veranda, the old- 
time throne of observation. He spoke of 
being somewhat in a hurry. 

" Why, don't be snatched/' said the 
planter. How many times had he said 
that. Years and years before, there came 
to his house a distant relative of his wife's 
forty-fifth cousin. He had come for a 



162 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

short visit, remained two years, and when 
finally he prepared to take his leave, the 
old planter, in the surprise of most genial 
courtesy, cried out: "Why, don't he 
snatched ! " The considerate relative said 
that he didn't believe he would — and he 
remained another year. But this business 
man was of another sinew. He was 
corded up till his strings twanged. " I've 
got to take the first boat," he said. 

"What, so soon?" 

" I'm in something of a hurry, and I 
must call at several other plantations be- 
fore returning. I suppose you know that 
the old firm has changed hands — the firm 
holding your mortgage." 

" Well, yes; I received a letter to that 
effect. Didn't answer it — had something 
else on my mind at the time. Tell 'em 



AFTER THE WAR 163 

I'll drop in and make their acquaintance 
when I come down. May be down some 
time next fall." 

" Yes, but they want their money and 
I have come after it." 

" Oh, money. Yes. And now, sir, do 
you know that it would give me great 
pleasure to help 'em out? It would, sir, 
for a fact. What's the news down your 
way?" 

The visitor was looking over a paper. 
" I have here the amount you owe the 
firm, amounting to " 

" Yes. But you don't mean to say they 
have kept track of all that nonsense? 
Why, that old firm and I were the best of 
friends, and now I want to ask you what 
right has this new firm to come in and 
stir up trouble? Haven't we had enough 



164 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

trouble? Want your money! Are you a 
firm of Yankees, sir ? " 

" We are a firm of business men, and 
unless you settle with us at once we shall 
be compelled to sell your land." 

A sad voice from the inside announced 
that supper was ready. " Won't you 
come in and eat a bite with us?" the 
planter kindly inquired, hoping that he 
might touch the heart of his enemy. 

" No. I haven't time. When may wc 
expect a settlement ? " 

" Expect a settlement. Those are 
harsh words, sir — harsh words to employ 
against a man in his own house. Give 
me time." 

" You have had ample time, Colonel." 

" Sir, I don't know what you mean by 
ample time." His humor came back to 



AFTER THE WAR 165 

him. " You shall have satisfaction of 
your debt, sir. Gather up a passle of 
them niggers out there and sell 'em." 

" Colonel, this is no time to joke. We 
want a settlement and will force one." 

For a moment the old man looked at 
him, with the glow of humor dying in 
his eyes. " You will find my son out there 
somewhere. Talk to him." 

Already the young fellow had begun 
to catch at new ideas. Strong, with an 
enthusiasm of the present livelier than the 
memory of a dead day that was sweet, he 
entered into arrangements to pay off the 
notes as fast as possible, and he kept his 
word — a soldier fighting for his honor, the 
true reconstructionist of the South, the 
man who is now building cotton factories 
in Georgia and Arkansas, who sees a 



166 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

glow, not of an ancient sunset, but of the 
fires of the furnaces at Birmingham. In 
England, whither he went on business, 
they called him a Yankee, and he smiled. 
His old father would have fought. 

Privilege dies hard. To the old planter 
there was yet no solace to be drawn from 
a mused memory of the past. The past 
was to close. Regret could not by lapse 
of time be mellowed fondness, to be talked 
over endearingly. That which was to be 
a trophied scar was still a tender wound. 
Humor, humor — the American philoso- 
phy — was the only salve. The old corn- 
shucking song, " Jurangy ho, jes er talkin' 
like er doan kere," was supplanted with 
the Northerner's tuneful sarcasm, " Say, 
darkees, hab you seen ol' massa wid de 
mufstach on his face?" The black, cot- 



AFTER THE WAR 167 

ton-shirted toddlers, digging in the sand, 
chanted the tune of freedom. The old 
grandfather, housed all winter with rheu- 
matism, hobbling out with the coming of 
spring, sat on a bench in the sunlight, was 
asked by a passer-by how he enjoyed his 
freedom. " I likes it fust rate, sah, an' I 
reckon I gwine git use ter it, but at de 
present ercasion I wush it didn' draw deze 
yere legs up so." Sad conception of lib- 
erty. They thought that not to be a slave 
was emancipation from all ills. The old 
planter could have told them better. 

Marvelous it was that the sun continued 
to be so bright. Were the heavens mock- 
ing the blasted earth ? And the birds were 
singing; in the dusk of evening the whip- 
poorwill called, and the brown quail, on 
the fence beneath the sassafras bush, 



168 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

" bob-whited " his ancient lay. The old 
man had loved nature. For him she had 
spread her poetry, her madrigals. But 
now she was shrieking a philippic to his 
distress. The hands of the clock went 
round, but how different was the time. 
The minutes fell dead in the midnight 
hour, when awake the old man lay on his 
bed, made hard by tender reminiscence, 
the air stealing from the sweet wilds of 
nature weighing heavy upon his breast. 
The joints of the mouldering house gave 
forth sharp sounds, like an ancient story- 
teller cracking his knuckles. Day was to 
come and the sun was to arise ; the morn- 
ing-glory was to bloom, clinging fondly 
to the old veranda, and the defiant holly- 
hock was to stand up straight near the 
kitchen door, but what hope was to be 



AFTER THE WAR 169 

borne upon the rays of light ? None. The 
planter could not vote, and a voteless 
white man was like a tailless peacock, a 
sore reproach unto himself. But with the 
day there came something to provoke a 
smile — a negro practicing the courtesy of 
his freedom " to his shadow in the road." 
The negro lawyer arose. His first re- 
quisite was a library, books of all sorts, 
Webster's old blue back, Jay's Family 
Prayers, seed catalogues — and the advo- 
cate who brought before the justice the 
largest armful of books was entitled to the 
decision. Of course the justice was a 
negro. There was one who may live in 
history. He had been the " property " of 
the old planter. In compliment to his in- 
tensity of blackness he was called 
Crow Sam. When put up for election, he 



170 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

was asked by the " committee man " as to 
the size of the majority he desired. He 
replied that he should like to have at least 
five hundred. He thought that his ser- 
vices to his country, and especially his 
long continuance of servitude, entitled him 
to that recompense. He had been a black- 
smith, and the " committee man " said to 
him: " Yes, that's all right; but you put 
a tire on the wheel of my carriage and 
I'll make your majority fifteen hundred." 
It was agreed to, and Crow Sam became 
a judge by fifteen hundred majority. 
There was no one opposed to him, but 
that made the majority all the surer. 
The first thing he did after taking 
his seat was to reverse a decision 
of the Supreme Court. A white lawyer 
who had swallowed the " abnegation " 



AFTER THE WAR 171 

oath and who, therefore, was entitled to a 
voice at the bar, arose and protested. 
" Your honor," said he, " you can't do 
that." 

"Cain' do whut?" 

" Reverse a decision of the Supreme 
Court." 

" Wall, now, jest you wait. How much 
'jority did de S'preme Cou't hab? An- 
swer me dat p'int. De generman fluctu- 
ates. We will now proceed wid de case." 

Before this justice the old planter was 
arraigned. The whole South laughed 
about it at the time — not at the humilia- 
tion of being drawn up before a former 
slave, but at the outcome. About the time 
that Sam put on his first air of freedom 
he did something to insult the planter, and 
was knocked down with a handspike. 



172 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

The " Bureau " fine was paid and Sam, 
as he turned to go out, not satisfied with 
the punishment, remarked to his former 
master : " Neber min', I'll get you myse'f 
one deze days." And his time came. The 
planter's offense, in the eye of the " col- 
ored " law, was most wanton. With a 
buggy whip he had lashed an insulting 
darky. When the warrant of arrest was 
sworn out before Crow Sam, the old fel- 
low laughed till he shook the clapboard 
shanty. His revenge was to hold a fes- 
tival. By force, and roughly handled, the 
planter was brought into court. Sam, 
who could not write his name, was busily 
scratching on paper. He looked up, fixed 
his glasses and remarked: 

" 'Pear ter me like I'se seed you befo', 
sah." 



AFTER THE WAR 173 

The planter screwed down the lid of his 

resentment and his anger bubbled low. 
The justice continued : " I kin reach back 
inter de past an' fetch yo' out, but yo' 
label dun wo' off an' I'll hatter ax yo' 

name." 

"Do your worst, you old scoundrel!" 
the planter exclaimed. 

" De generman mighty familiar wid de 
law ter talk datter way. Whar do you 
'side, sah?" 

The white lawyer advised the planter 
to be temperate, and so he answered : 

" About two miles from here, on the 
Campbell's Bend road." 

" Been libin' in dat 'munity long, sah? " 

" I was born there." 

" In de fust or second quarter or de 
dark o' de moon — which one? ' 



174 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

Is this a means of torture you have 
devised, you black scoundrel ! " The law- 
yer whispered and the old man bowed his 
humiliated head. 

" You'se gittin' mo' an' mo' fermiliar 
wid de law, sah. Bime-by I 'low you kin 
practice it; an' wheneber you does, dis 
yere cou't hereby speaks fo' yo' pat'onage. 
But fust, we will dispose o' de case in han'. 
Let us yere de 'plaint/' 

It was then set forth that Abner Steele 
called the planter a liar, and that in his 
fury the old man fell upon him and out 
of his black hide cut streams of blood. 
The justice looked grave. " It's er mighty 
serious thing, sah, ter shed de free blood 
o' dis yere country. Yistidy I sentenced 
er man ter de penertenchy an' ter-morrer 



AFTER THE WAR 175 

I gwine sentence one ter be hung, so whut 
you think I ought er do wid you? " 

" What you please, you imp of the 
devil!" 

" Wush I could talk like dis white pus- 
son. He could stan' up dar an' make er 
rithmetic ershamed o' itse'f. I neber wuz 
so flattered in my life. Did you eber yere 
er song erbout marster bein' in de col', 
col' groun'? Mebby befo' mornin' some 
o' deze niggers will be er singin' it. I 
wuz jest er thinkin' how times had 
changed. I neber did see de like. Did 
you? Wall, sah, one time er white man 
dat I berlonged ter knocked me down wid 
er han'spike, an' ez I lay dar on de groun' 
I didn' think I eber would be er jedge. 
Man has been tryin' all his life ter fin' 
out but you neber kin tell whut's gwine 



176 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

ter happen. But come, now, Mars Bob. 
Doan look black at me. Dis yere Abner 
is ez big er scoundul ez I uster be, an' 
we'll discharge you, fling de State in de 
cos' an' put dis rascal Abner at work on 
de levee. Did you think I gwine hurt you ? 
Bless yo' ol' life, you ought ter knocked 
me down dat time — yas, sah, caze I wuz 
bad. Ricolleck w'en we wuz boys we uster 
sein de creek wid our straw hats ? You'se 
sorter fadin' erway frum me. Would you 
please, sah, min' gibin' me you' han' ? " 

The old planter thrust forth his hand. 
" God bless your black hide," he said. 

And the country laughed, but it was 
not a gleeful laugh, for soft and mellow, 
there were tears in it. 

One day a new hope was born. The 
shackles made of bayonets fell off and the 



AFTER .THE WAR 177 

white man could vote. It was the second 
emancipation. The rebel soldier, now a 
plow-hand, took off his hat to the old flag. 
Almost within the time of one day a 
change was marked. The foxhound horn 
was heard in the moonlight. The flowers 
seemed to have bloomed afresh. And 
down the road, in the noontime sun, came 
riding a man who had fought with Old 
Stonewall, announcing himself as a candi- 
date for Congress. At the planter's house 
he halted. " Bob," he called, " I want to 
go to Congress. I think we ought to for- 
give. Don't you? " 

" Yes, when we want office." 

But the struggle was not over. The 

Carpetbagger owned the negro. There 

was to be another war along the shores 

of the Arkansas. And it came out of a 



178 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

peculiar tangle. For Governor, Brooks 
was supported by the Democrats, and 
was, the returns declared, defeated by 
Baxter, the choice of the Republicans. 
Baxter was seated, but not long after tak- 
ing his seat it was discovered that he was 
a Democrat in disguise. In the meantime 
the Republicans had fallen in love with 
Brooks, whom they had opposed. They 
said that he should be seated, and he was, 
by force of arms. The war-drum beat on 
the plain. The negro and the white man, 
unhitching their plow-horses, galloped to 
arms, one opposing the other. The two 
armies marched to the Capital of the 
State. Up and down a street, keeping 
them apart, was a troop of United States 
regulars. 

But at night there were fierce skir- 



AFTER THE WAR 179 

mishes, and when the morning dawned 
dead men lay in the streets. In Washing- 
ton there were two committees, one from 
each side, pleading with Grant. The 
Democrats had small hope. They said 
that the President was a partisan. The 
Republicans held the State House in Lit- 
tle Rock and were gleeful. They were 
waiting for the decision. It came, at 
night. Their bonfires had been lighted. 
Off in the semi-darkness gleamed the bay- 
onets of the regulars. Farther away were 
the saddened ranks of the Democrats. 
Through the streets came a horseman, 
holding aloft a telegram. The Brooks 
men cheered his coming. The commander 
read the message. He put his hand to 
his head. He turned and looked toward 
the grim old State House. His officers 



180 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

crowded about him. " Put out your fires," 
he said. " Make peace with the enemy. 
Grant has decided in their favor." 

It was then that the Arkansas River 
planter became a broad American. His 
old house was repaired. Again he be- 
gan to read the newspapers to see what 
the world was doing. He was "recon- 
structed," not by force of arms but with 
a word, spoken by the silent man at Wash- 
ington. 




A Belle of the careless Fifties. 



A CAVALIER OF THE CARELESS 
FIFTIES. 



Never was there before nor can there 
ever be again the counterpart of such a 
civilization. Indeed, by many it was not 
termed a civilization but a feudalism, and 
by a few of the learned of the East it was 
called not a feudalism but a despotism. 
I refer to a time when the planter sat on 
his veranda, the morning-glories bloom- 
ing about him, with pipe and julep-glass, 
dreamily looking out upon a distant sea 
of purple — a field of cotton in bloom. Lei- 
sure is the nurse of culture, but the typical 
old planter was no more a man of letters 
than the present-day coal baron is a lover 

of the muses. 

183 



184 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

In mind I hold a memory of the lower 
Arkansas River, with its crumbling banks, 
its broad low lands, its heavy timber on 
the distant hills, and between the river 
and the hills the house of the planter. 
Built of logs, rambling, with a shed here 
and an odd storeroom there, with broad 
veranda and spacious hallway, it squatted 
low among the trees — the rollicking place 
of youth, the traveler's rest, an old lord's 
castle. The rising curtain of Jristory did 
not reveal this old lord. He came in be- 
tween the second and third acts, as a tab- 
leau, to be removed before the real world 
could get more than a glimpse of him. He 
represented a short scene for a brief pe- 
riod and then was ruled out. 

To us now it was a strange phase of life 
on the soil of free America. The dark 



THE CARELESS FIFTIES 185 

tillers of his soil were as much his prop- 
erty as the mules that pulled the plows. 
To market he could draw them, stand 
them on a block and sell them to the high- 
est bidder. If he desired it he could sell 
them to the lowest bidder. Flesh and 
blood were as much a commodity as corn 
and cotton. The abolitionists called this 
old fellow a heartless beast, but that was 
not true. A beast has no lingering sense 
of humor, and this old fellow was humor- 
ous. To his house came the preacher and 
they talked about the divine origin of slav- 
ery, and at night the preacher prayed for 
the souls of the slaves. The body-servant, 
gentlemanly, black arrayed in black, 
grunted Amen— and the slavery question 
was for the time securely settled. But 
even at this late day, after so much rancor, 



186 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

so much blood, so many years of avowed 
forgetfulness of the bygone, we can give 
but an occasional glimpse of this life. 
The new generation would not believe a 
picture. Uncle Tom is still rife in the 
land, treading the scar left across the 
country by the war, and the echo of the 
bloodhound is heard in the library of the 
learned. 

What a lordly, careless life it was, led 
by the Arkansas River planter ; how glow- 
ing the days and how soft with moonlight 
the bird-serenaded evening. Was not this 
musical sloth enough to stimulate gener- 
osity? Was not the richness of the soil, 
washed during high water from the Bad 
Lands two thousand miles away, enough 
to foster carelessness? The Yankee on 
his flinty hillside was saving money to 



THE CARELESS FIFTIES 187 

build a factory, a railroad — at a distant 
day to stagger Europe with the power of 
his Trust. The planter was building a 
mortgage on his vast estate. But the most 
of the time this mortgage was a joke. 
Was it not held by a Southern merchant 
in New Orleans, a perfect gentleman, and 
as far from an Abolitionist as Charles 
Stewart was from Old Peter Wentworth? 
Then why should there be any uneasi- 
ness? 

There wasn't. But sometimes, in the 
fall of the year, when the opened crop was 
billowy in the field, the merchant would 
f ancy __ a m ere fancy, I assure you— that 
he needed his money. At the planter's 
woodyard a steamboat would land and off 
would come a meek-looking man. The 
planter would meet him with a cordial 



188 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

roar. After supper, music in the parlor, 
a room hung with portraits painted by 
nomadic Frenchmen — the handsome 
daughter recently graduated from Mag- 
nolia Grove would sing; then from the 
veranda they would watch the negroes 
dance in the moonlight; they would talk 
on every conceivable subject — the freedom 
of American institutions and the des- 
potism of Russia. But not a word about 
mortgages or money. The next morning 
the planter would drive the merchant over 
the plantation, a darky meeting them at 
unexpected turns with liquor and mint; 
they would have noon dinner on the ve- 
randa, and then for hours they would loll 
in digestive doze, in the shade of the live- 
oak; and then, awaking about the time 




They would have mint julip on the veranda. 



THE CARELESS FIFTIES 191 

the sun had left a blazed trail in the dis- 
tant woods, the merchant would begin : 

" Jim, I don't know whether you know 
it or not, but times are getting hard." 

" You don't tell me." 

" Yes, I do. That's what I came to 
tell you. The fact is, I've got to do some- 
thing about that mortgage. Friendship 
is all right, you know, but business 
is " 

" Yes, that's right, John." 

" And if the worst comes to the worst 
I'll have to sell you out." 

" Yes, and that's what has been griev- 
ing me nearly to death for so long a time. 
I don't think I have slept more than half 
a night for a year. Let's see, you were 
here about a year ago, wa'n't you? " 

" Yes, just a year ago, Jim; and I told 



192 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

you then that I had to have money, but 
before I left you borrowed an additional 
thousand dollars of me." 

" I recollect," says the planter. " It 
rained the night before and we were need- 
ing rain. And by the way, we are need- 
ing rain now. That bottom over yonder 
— as good buck-shot land as a crow ever 
flew over — ought to make at least two 
bales to the acre, and it will if we have 
rain. By the way, what has become of 
Old Darb Sevier?" 

" I see him around the city once in a 
while." 

" He could beat any man I ever saw 
prophesying rain. And he could take the 
forked limb of a peach tree and locate a 
well — do it nine times out of ten — located 
that one out there. Here, Sam," he yells 



THE CARELESS FIFTIES 193 

at a negro boy, " bring us some water 
from that well. Can't be beat." And 
when the water is brought he holds the 
tumbler up to the light, and upon the 
purity of water in general and on this 
water in particular he delivers a lecture. 

" Yes, sir," says the hard-hearted mer- 
chant, " times are tight. And if I don't 
raise money at once I'm ruined." 

" The whole world is going wrong," 
declares the planter. " And I think it 
comes from them speeches made by the 
Abolitionists." 

" Cotton is low in Liverpool, Jim. That 
is one of the causes." A silence falls, the 
air is still ; from afar comes the cry of the 
horned owl. Bull-bats bellow high in the 
dusky air and away off on the hillside a 
negro sings a melancholy song — calling 



194 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

on the Lord to send the chariot to take 
him home. 

" When must you have the money, 
John?" 

" I must take it back with me to-mor- 
row." 

' You shall have it in the morning." 

" I thank you, Jim." 

" Not at all. You know I wouldn't see 
an old friend suffer." 

Until a late hour they sit in the soft 
air, telling stories; and then r when the 
noises along the river have died away one 
by one, they go to bed, these business 
men. 

At ten o'clock the next forenoon the 
boat is to land on her way down the river 
and the planter and his guest are early 
astir. Breakfast by candle-light, and then 



THE CARELESS FIFTIES 195 

comes a conference out in the little office 
at the corner of the yard. For a time the 
two men sit in silence, the planter drum- 
ming on his dingy old desk. " John/' he 
says, " you knew when you came that 
you'd get your money." 

" I thought so, Jim, or I wouldn't have 

come." 

" Exactly. You know the amount I 
owe you is as good as any gold ever dug 
out of the earth. But I am tight run at 
present, and the fact is I must raise a 
thousand dollars myself right now. Wait 
a minute, John. There are times when a 
man needs money and then again there 
are times when he's got to have it. This 
is one of the ' got-to ' times. It's no case 
of gambling or buying another nigger, 

. . • y) 

it is 



196 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

"A thousand dollars! Gracious alive! 
1 couldn't let you have it to save my 
life." 

" I know you can't, John, but let me 
tell you. You are a man of family and I 
must appeal to you. If you were lacking 
in sensibilities or family I should suffer 
and say nothing — suffer the disgrace that 
must come if I don't get the thousand." 

" Jim, I came after money and I can't 
let you have a cent." 

" I tell you it is not for a common or a 
sordid purpose. Now listen to me: The 
annual ball at the St. Charles this fall is 
to be the grandest for years. It is to set 
the social pace and fix the status of every 
family along the river. The tickets are 
one thousand dollars a family. John, 
would you shut my wife and daughters 



THE CARELESS FIFTIES 197 

out of that ball? Would you listen to 
them mourning out in the wilderness ? I 
appeal to you — they appeal to you. 
You've got your check-book with you and 
here's pen and ink. That's it — just a 
thousand, no more." 

The merchant writes the check. The 
planter goes with him to the landing and 
wrings his hand a good-by as he steps 
upon the gangplank. 

That mortgage was standing when Lee 
surrendered. It was one of the inheri- 
tances that fell to a young fellow when, 
ragged, he returned from the war. 

Was there ever such a life as that, away 
back there on the murky river? Will- 
iam's Baron knocked the Saxon on the 
head and put him under the yoke, but that 
he might better manage his new estate he 



198 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

married the Saxon's daughter. He did 
not claim the Saxon's soul, nor could he 
in the market-place sell for all time the 
Saxon's body. Then, compared with the 
planter, he was not an absolute master. 
I recall a story told of the owner of buck- 
shot land. He was on a boat, coming 
from New Orleans. He had sold his cot- 
ton and had paid a part of the interest on 
his mortgage. At the bow of the slow old 
steamer the negroes were singing a weird 
song, improvised, drawn from the melan- 
choly mysteries of the night. Along the 
shore the traveler's red-eyed campfire 
peered through the dark. In the cabin 
there was the music of mellow strings, 
the gleam of jewels and the wavelet-like 
swish of silk — a ball. But for these the 
planter had not an eye nor an ear. He 



THE CARELESS FIFTIES 199 

was in a poker game. From the first he 
began to lose. Near him stood his faith- 
ful body-servant, black as the night lying 
low along the banks. The hour grew late, 
the fiddles were tired, the dance hall de- 
serted. 

" Well," remarked the planter as he 
bought another stack of chips, " there 
goes my cotton crop. I reckon you have 
heard of the planter that lost five black 
niggers — at this table, probably/' After 
a while he called out: " What, all my 
blacks gone? Well, I've got three mulat- 
toes. Here, give me a stack of yellows." 
He lost a big pot. The darky behind him 
coughed. " Dan," said the planter, 
" stand farther away. You queer me." 
The negro walked away and stood like an 
ebon statue. Another pot was lost. The 



200 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

planter leaned over and whispered to a 
man on the opposite side of the table. The 
man looked at Black Dan and nodded. 
The game went on. The planter shoved 
back his chair. Presently he arose, when 
the deal went on and no card fell in front 
of him — arose and went to Dan. 

" Marster, I'se sorry de kyards has run 
ag'in you so hard." 

" I've let them ruin me, Dan." 
" Yas, sah, but we kin work an' make 
it up." 

" Yes, if I had you to help me, Dan." 
" But ain't I heah, Marster? " 
" Yes, Dan, but not for me. I've lost 
you. That big man with the whiskers is 
your master now." 

" De Lawd deliber me. Wait a minit, 
Mars Jim. Will twenty dollars do you 



THE CARELESS FIFTIES 201 

any good? I has sabed up dat much. 
Yere it is." He handed to the planter a 
twenty-dollar goldpiece. "Do whut you 
kin wid it." 

" I have come back for one more show- 
down/' said the planter, returning to the 
game. He sat down. The cards came his 
way — he began to win. And when the 
sun arose, when the boat landed at the 
woodyard, the old man and the faithful 
Dan went ashore arm in arm. He had 
been won back and the crop of cotton had 
been saved. It was a Sunday, and after- 
ward he remarked that never had he so 
thoroughly enjoyed a sermon as the one 
delivered on that occasion by the neigh- 
borhood preacher. The text was that fa- 
mous bracer of slavery — " Abraham had 
servants that he bought with his money." 



202 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

This man believed that he was relig- 
ious. And in his way he was. He was 
a believer in the divine right to inherit 
whatever his father left to him. Into the 
world he had not come to overturn insti- 
tutions. Virginia, his temple of godli- 
ness, had abolished the slave trade before 
it had been by statute frowned on in New 
England, and that was enough for him. 

This old fellow's habits were not disso- 
lute. He had a few occasional customs 
that the Puritans would not have passed 
without censure, but he was not a tavern 
brawler nor would he permit his North- 
ern overseer to rawhide a darky on Sun- 
day. Once he had a fight with the 
preacher — gave and received a bloody 
nose, and when reproached by his wife he 
ably defended himself. " Yes, I hit him/ 7 



THE CARELESS FIFTIES 203 

said he, " but you haven't heard me say 
anything about cutting down his salary." 
In " the city " — which meant New Or- 
leans — he was a favorite. At the old St. 
Charles he was always given a bed with 
a pair of clean sheets, but it is a question 
whether or not he knew when he went to 
bed, if he did go, that there were any 
sheets at all, or even any bed. He held 
in contempt the French manner of duel- 
ing. "If you meet me under the Oaks," 
he once remarked, " you'll meet me with 
a double barreled gun. I don't want to 
be picked at with a long darning-needle. 
When men fight duels they ought to mean 
business. I am a business man." From 
the proprietor of the hotel he nearly al- 
ways borrowed money enough to see him 
home unless it were cotton-selling time, 



204 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

and then he usually had enough of his 
own to see him almost there. Nearly all 
of his distresses were humorous. As a 
general thing he had half a dozen sons- 
in-law living with him. The majority of 
them were doctors. I recall one of them. 
He was a showy fellow and had married 
the flower of the flock. He attended the 
negroes on the plantation. One day the 
planter said to him: " Doctor, I like you. 
But you are too expensive for me. Un- 
derstand, you married my favorite daugh- 
ter and that I like to indulge your whims 
hut they cost too much. You are killing 
too many of my niggers. I don't want to 
cut you down, but if it's just the same to 
you, go off on a vacation and let some of 
them get well." 

To him there had been two Presidents 



THE CARELESS FIFTIES 205 

of the United States — Washington and 
Jackson. But Washington lived far back 
in the past and was almost a sainted myth, 
while the echo of Old Hickory's voice was 
still rumbling among the hills and in the 
hollows of political life. Fate, in the dark 
gown of her authority, writing the des- 
tiny of nations, had never scrolled another 
name with such a bearing down of the 
pen. There were able statesmen, but 
never on earth could there be another su- 
preme intellect. To him it was always a 
delight to tell that old story, now a clas- 
sic. Shortly after Jackson's death two of 
his slaves were working in the field. One 
of them remarked : " Wall, Abe, ol' Mar- 
ster's gone." 

" Yep, dun lef us." 



206 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

" Abe, you reckon he went ter 
heaben? " 

" Wall, ef he wanted ter go I doan 
know who gwine keep him out." 

This story was known up and down the 
river, but when a stranger told it he was 
welcome to a month's board. 

This old man loved Walter Scott but 
he hated Dickens. Scott taught him all 
the English history he cared to know, 
made him gallant and induced him to cut 
crenellations on the square board tower 
of his carriage-house. Dickens criticised 
America and the old planter was America. 
The rest of the population were Yankees. 

As absurd as it may seem, this owner 
of slaves held in abhorrence the profes- 
sional negro trader. In new Orleans 
there was a great slave-market, and it is 



THE CARELESS FIFTIES 207 

said that standing here was once a tall 
youth, gazing in horror at the traffic in 
human beings. From that moment he be- 
came an emancipationist. The years 
passed; a cloud hung over the land. He 
signed a proclamation that set the negroes 
free. 

No, this lordly leisure did not stimulate 
literature, but it fostered something as old 
at Attic poetry — forensic oratory. With 
the brightest book in his hand the planter 
might doze off to sleep, but under the spell 
of even an ordinary speech his soul arose 
exultant. He did not want statistics, but 
fire. Oratory must imitate the cry of the 
hounds. His gospel was physical cour- 
age. A man who was not willing to die 
for what he believed to be true was not 
worthy to live. To call him a liar meant 



208 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

death. Only on one occasion do I recall 
a backsliding from this moral obligation. 
On the court-house square the planter was 
engaged in sharp words with a man not 
celebrated for his nerve. The bystanders 
knew that there was to be trouble. It was 
observed that the countenance of an un- 
dertaker, looking on, lighted up with a 
smile. Finally the man called the planter 
a liar. There was a cry of " Look out ! " 
But no pistol, no knife was drawn. The 
planter walked off. The people were as- 
tounded. Surely the planter had not un- 
derstood the word. Some one went to 
him : " Do you realize the fact that he 
called you a liar ? " 

" Yes, I understood him perfectly." 
" And you ain't going to kill him? " 
" No," 



THE CARELESS FIFTIES 209 

"May I ask why?" 

" Because I am a liar." 

But the next man who tried it was car- 
ried away on a shutter. 

In most ways the old fellow was lovable. 
He would borrow money but he was quick 
to lend. To woman he bowed low. Once 
when he bowed lower than usual he 
turned to a friend and remarked : " I 
owe her husband." For trade he had a 
contempt. He used to say, " A gentleman 
can't buy and sell — unless it's cotton." 
He had more respect for a pauper lawyer 
than for a rich grocer. He held that the 
real gentleman made his living by land or 
by intellect. 

He has passed, nor could the combined 
statesmanship of the world nor the 
armies of the great powers devise a means 



210 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

by which any one might take his place. 
In a country that gave to mankind a Lin- 
coln, he was a Czar. 



THE PIONEER BUSINESS MAN. 



Out in the southwest, in Tennessee 
or Kentucky, a long cabin moldering 
into decay marks the spot where the 
adventurous business man of a day 
now held in romantic reverence first 
unfolded his bolt of calico and exhib- 
ited to the wife and the daughter of the 
squatter the splendors of civilization. 
Business has ever been adventurous, 
but here it was almost desperate. The 
adventurer had to fight his way through 
a thousand difficulties, river torrents 
and forest fires, and then at last, when 
settled down he had to look out, not 
for the first-of-month draft of the bank 
but for the glinting sight of an Indian 



211 



212 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

hiding behind a tree. The cabin of 
merchandise was usually built beside a 
stream and, of course, not far from the 
blazed trail that led from one fort to 
another. It must seem that it would 
have been more in the line of common 
sense had the pioneer merchant set up 
his stock of goods in the midst of a pro- 
tected settlement, but he didn't, not in- 
deed because the ground was already 
covered by a trader, but because, as one 
of them expressed it, he wanted room. 
Plenty of room was the one essential. 
The store house may not have been 
larger than ten by fifteen feet, so that 
this plenty of room could not have 
meant space inside. And, it was an in- 
stance of sitting down and waiting for 
customers, not only for them to come 



THE PIONEER BUSINESS MAN 213 

into the store but for them to move into 
the neighborhood. With a sort of un- 
erring judgment the pioneer business 
man usually selected a spot that never 
was to become a town. ' Why did you 
build your house so near the swamp? " 
was asked and the business man looked 
surprised. 

' Why, to keep some fellow from 
buildin' on the other side of me/' was 
his answer. 

Typical of this class was an old fel- 
low named Dan Cavit. He built his 
cabin not far from the Cumberland 
River and hung out a bit of flaming 
cloth and fired of! a gun, which, prop- 
erly interpreted meant that he was 
ready for business. A joker came 
along and inquired as to his stock. 



214 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

"Wall, I'm putty full of all things 
that a feller is likely to need out here/' 
he said. 

"Muskets?" 

" Oh, yes, plenty of muskets." 

"Bibles?" 

" Box full of 'em." 

" But I want an artickle and I don't 
believe you've got it." 

" Can't tell whuther I have or not till 
you let me know what it is." 

" A Cherokee scalp." 

"Wait a minit." The old fellow 
stepped into the house and returned 
with a scalp. " Here," said he, " is a 
piece of property that used to belong to 
Hard Claw, the chief. He traded it to 
me for an ounce of lead. Did think that 
I would leave it to my children as a 



THE PIONEER BUSINESS MAN 215 

hair loom, but the tought occurred to 
me tuther day that I hadn't any chil- 
dren, so you may have the scalp at a 
reasonable figger." 

The scalp was bought for one dollar, 
a fair profit on the expediture of an 
ounce of lead, and the liar who handed 
down this tradition says that many 
years afterward it became the property 
of Andrew Jackson, was taken to 
Washington by him and that one night, 
at a ball, it dangled from the belt of the 
graceful but erratic Peggy O'Neil. 

But old Dan himself was not merely 
a tradition. He was enough of a fact to 
leave a record of his conversion to 
Christianity. " One day about two 
o'clock after dinner," says his account, 
properly inscribed in a blank book, "I 



216 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

was sittin' about waitin' for customers, 
robbers or Ingins, it didn't make much 
difference whicher one, when up rode a 
circuit rider. I had never seen him be- 
fore but from description I took him to 
be Brother Peter B. Watkins. and such 
proved to be the truth He stepped 
over a hound dog and came in, and this 
hound I wish to remark was one of the 
finest in the neighborhood. He was 
never known to bark up the wrong tree 
and it ain't usual that a hound is known 
for pure grit but this one was as brave 
as Julius Caesar or putty near it from 
what I know of one party and from 
what I have hearn tell of the other one. 
The hound's name was Snort and he 
killed the biggest coon that ever was 
born in or invaded the Twenty-Sixth 



THE PIONEER BUSINESS MAN 217 

prescinct. Well, Brother Watkins 
stepped over him and came into the 
store and said that it was a fine day. 
Snort looked up and sneezed and I 
didn't dispute the fact that the weather 
was fine for I knew it was, but I re- 
marked that we needed rain. Brother 
Watkins 'lowed that the Lord would 
send rain in his own good time, and I 
'lowed that if he wanted to keep up his 
record with Noah I reckoned mebby he 
would. Brother Watkins didn't seem 
to like this very much — appeared to 
think that I was takm a liberty with 
the bible and he said that it didn't 
behove me to compare things that way. 
I replied that I had a habit of comparin' 
things to suit myself. He said I ought 
sometimes to suit the company. This 



218 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

sorter hit me where I was polite and I 
begged his pardon. He took out a twist 
of tobacco, we gnawed off and then sot 
there and chawed in meditative and 
brotherly silence. After a while I asked 
him if he was havin' much luck in 
fetchin' folks into the church and he 
spit on the hound and said, i Wall, 
midlinV And for a time we chawed on 
and didn't say nothin'. But after a 
while he looked up and said: 'I hear 
you are the cussinest man in the whole 
country/ ' Well/ I said, ' I am a cussin' 
man fur I am in a cussin' business.' He 
chawed on for a time and then said it 
was wrong to cuss. I 'lowed mebby it 
was and done some little chawin' my- 
self till he 'lowed that no man had a 
right to take the Lord's name in vain, 



THE PIONEER BUSINESS MAN 219 

and then I stopped chawin' long enough 
to say that I didn't take it in vain but 
to putty good purpose when I cussed 
some folks that I knowd of. Then he 
said that cussin' didn't do nobody no 
harm except the cusser, and this forced 
me to say that it was a matter of 
opinion. This was as far as we got 
when a feller come in to sell a batch of 
coon skins, or ruther to trade 'em for 
licker and tobacker, and when the trans- 
action was over I set down again and 
looked at Brother Watkins, but he was 
asleep in his chair. I knew that he must 
have been nearly a day and a night on 
his hoss and I didn't wake him up but 
let him sleep. Nobody else came in, as 
trade wan't so mighty brisk, and 
Brother Watkins he slept peaceful till 



220 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

along toward sundown, when he woke 
up and said: ' I must have drapped off.' 
' Yes,' I 'lowed, ' you have been puttin' 
in a few putty fair licks.' He stretched 
himself and wanted to know how long 
befo' I thought it was time for me to 
quit cussin' and join the church. I told 
him that as cussin' was about the only 
luxury I had except tobacker I didn't 
believe I'd give it up as long as I was 
able to enjoy it. He scratched his head 
and for a while was silent and then he 
spoke up : ( I am thinkin' about buildin' 
a church near here, about five miles 
away, and I want you to help. And 
after it is built I want you to take yo' 
place in it as one of the prominent mem- 
bers.' I sorter laughed but he give me 
a look that showd me he was in earnest. 



THE PIONEER BUSINESS MAN 221 

' Why, Brother/ says I, ' you don't 
know how unnttin' a man I am for a 
leader in the church. You'd better go 
out and git an Ingin to serve in my 
place.' But he shook his head and 
'lowed that he thought I was good 
enough timber for that position. ' But 
I ain't got no religion,' said I, and he 
said we might look 'round and find 
some for me. ' There's always a good 
artickle of religion a waitin' for the 
man that gits down on his knees,' said 
he and this made me smile when I re- 
plied: 'Yes, but I ain't got down on 
my knees yit.' ' That's what I natur- 
ally observe,' said he, ' but you are goin' 
to git down and pray for worthiness to 
act as head man in the new church,' 
and by this time the sun was down and 



222 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

I 'lowed what we'd better have a bite 
to eat and he said all right and I stirred 
about and baked a hoe cake of corn 
bread and broiled about a half a midlin' 
of meat. He complimented me by 
eatin' with an active appetite and after 
we shoved back from the box that 
served as a table he wiped his hands on 
his big red handkerchief and said that 
he was now ready to return to the mat- 
ter of my becomin' fittin' to join his 
church. ' When you git ready to go to 
bed for the night/ said I, ' you'll find a 
hoss blanket there on the counter and 
you may pick out the softest place on 
the floor.' But he shook his head. He 
remarked that he was one of the preach- 
ers that compelled 'em to come in. ' You 
know what I mean.' I said that I was 



THE PIONEER BUSINESS MAN 223 

usually in a fog on such matters and he 
said he would make it plain. ' You 
know there was a feast given by a rich 
man/ said he, ' and he sent out a num- 
ber of invitations but they returned ex- 
cuses. Nearly everybody was too buisy 
to come to the wedding supper. So 
after a while he sent out his servants 
and told them to fetch in folks whether 
or no. Well, they went out, they did, 
and they pulled and they hauled, and 
brought in a number of fellows. And 
that is my business now, Brother Dan. 
I am out after fellers and I want you.' 
' That's all right/ said I, ' but you 
didn't go far enough with yo' story. 
Among the fellers that was fotch in 
there was one that didn't have on no 
weddin' garment, and this stirred up a 



224 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

row and they took the po' feller that 
didn't want to come no how and flung 
him over the fence. Now I ain't got no 
weddin' garment and I don't want to be 
flung out.' This stuck him for a while 
and he scratched his head, but there 
was no sich thing as downin' such a 

man as he was, so he said: * It is true 
that you ain't got no weddin' garment, 
and I am here to make you one, and 
now in order for me to take your meas- 
ure you must git down on yo' knees.' 
' But,' says I, ' there ain't no use of the 
weddin' garment for I don't want to go 
to the weddin'. I am a bacheldor and 
don't believe in weddin's no how.' I 
thought this would surely floor him, 
but it didn't. He looked at me and 
said : ' At our feast we are a needin' of 



THE PIONEER BUSINESS MAN 225 

a good strong appetite, and thurfo' I 
must insist that you kneel down with 
me while I take the measure for the 
weddin' garment.' I still held out ag'in 
him, and after a while he broke off all 
peaceable relations by sayin' that he 
would find it to be his pleasure and his 
duty to compel me. The fire was burn- 
ing low and I 'lowed that we'd better 
have a little more light, so I lit the tal- 
low candle and stuck it up on the wall. 
Durin' this time he sat in silence, a 
communin', I tuck it, and when he had 
communed about enough he got up and 
put his hand on my shoulder and told 
me to git down and pray with him. ' If 
that's the sort of a feast you've got for 
me,' said I, ' why, I don't believe I'm 
so mighty hungry.' ' Yes,' he said, 



226 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

1 you are hungry — you are almost 
starvin' to death/ I shoved at him but 
he wouldn't git away and then we 
clinched. The candle fell down from 
the wall, and the hound dog a standin' 
with his paws in the door set up a 
howling and the house shook as we hit 
the floor, and as we tussled he'd ask me 
every once in a while if I was hungry 
yit and I'd answer no, till at last he got 
me down in a corner by the counter and 
I told him that I believed I was gittin' 
a little knawish but he 'lowed I wan't 
quite willin' enough to eat, and finally 
I told him that I never in my life felt 
so much like goin' to a feast, and he let 
me up and without any more ado I 
told him that I was ready to join him 
in any sort of prayer he might propose. 



THE PIONEER BUSINESS MAN 227 

Well, he stayed all night with me— 
stayed two days, the fact is, and when 
he left or rather a good while befo', I 
saw my way clear. I stopped cussin', 
began to give better measure than I had 
been givin', wouldn't even cheat an 
Ingin, and that, I thought, entitled me 
to be the corner stone of any church in 

the land." 

In those days business was a series 
of barter interrupted by rough anec- 
dote and the church militant.' Ever was 
the merchant ready to drop his yard 
stick and seize his musket, not only to 
fight the Indians but the British, and 
when the time came, down to New Or- 
leans went the pioneer merchant to 
make illustrious the name of Jackson 
and to set his country's eternal claim 



228 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

upon the mouth of the mighty river. 
When the country became settled he 
picked up his small stock of goods and 
moved away, further toward the West. 
It did not seem that he was seeking so 
much the development of trade as the 
right ever to exercise his, the peculiari- 
ties of his own individuality. But in 
the West the country grew so fast that 
he could not always get out of the way 
and thus surrounded he sometimes be- 
came the leading merchant in a town, 
to rid himself of his wild ways and later 
to send his sons to colleges in the East. 
Once or twice in the course of our na- 
tional life this sort of a man, in the 
West, from grub-staking miners has 
turned toward education himself, has 
read by the dim light of a bear-fat lamp, 



THE PIONEER BUSINESS MAN 229 

has fought with great problems and 
has gone to the United States Senate. 
Side by side with this rover has jogged 
along the circuit rider. As truly as any 
crusader of old was he a soldier of the 
Cross. He knew not how soon his 
scalp might adorn the wigwam of the 
Indian or at what moment the panther 
might claim him as his own, but these 
little obstacles made not the slightest 
difference to him. As if it were a sun- 
rise he saw his duty glimmering upon 
the distant hill-top, and toward it 
he struggled, never daunted, always 
kindly, prayful, sympathetic, but ready 
to fight friend or foe for his church. 
The first man who hailed the pioneer 
business man as he was getting out the 
logs for the construction of his rude 



230 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

commercial emporium was the circuit 
rider. He came over the buffalo trail, 
looking not for gain but for a soil where 
he might sow a seed, and when found 
the seed was planted and watered with 
faith. History gives no account of an- 
other man like him. The soldiers of 
the early church braved many dangers, 
it is true, would have fought lions and 
tigers, which under the bloody emperor 
they were indeed forced to do, but the 
circuit rider in the wilderness, thous- 
ands of miles from the seat of his 
authority, with the ringing notes not of 
praises but of wolves sounding in his 
ears, presents an unparalleled picture of 
solitude and devotion to cause. He was 
not a business man but he blazed the 



THE PIONEER BUSINESS MAN 231 

path for business and business paved 
the road for enlightenment. 

In this pioneer business man how 
potently was reflected the peculiar - 
genius of early America. Love of coun- 
try is more marked in a man who lives 
in a cabin than in one who dwells in a 
palace. Solitude is the essence of free- 
dom, and the love of freedom is the 
parent of patriotism. The pioneer was 
shrewd in his judgment of men. It was 
almost impossible to hide a motive from 
him. A dollar was hard to get and he 
knew its value. Whether or not he 
were religious he read the bible, for it 
was almost the only book within his 
reach, and to this book Ruskin owed 
his literary finish and his power of ex- 
pression. So, when the time came and 



232 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

the pioneer stood upon the stump to 
speak to his neighbors on questions 
that vitally concerned them, he spoke 
as one inspired. His methods of trade 
were rude and direct, and in dealing 
with public affairs he is wanting in that 
polish known as statecraft, that is to 
say, his deceptions were not polite. 
This has given Europeans cause to de- 
clare that the American knows nothing 
of diplomacy. It is said of old Sam 
Houston that when president of Texas 
he had occasion to meet a well-known 
Spanish diplomatist and to haggle with 
him over a question which gave prom- 
ise of vexatiousness. The Spaniard ob- 
jected to everything proposed by Old 
Sam, but he did it in a charming man- 
ner. He accused the American of not 



THE PIONEER BUSINESS MAN 233 

telling the truth and was so polite about 
it that the Texan president thought for 
a time that it was a compliment, but 
finally the truth was flashed upon him 
and he knocked his diplomatic visitor 
down. When reproached for his act he 
replied: 

" Come to think of it," said he, " I 
may not be what you might call a first- 
class diplomat, but I reckon that I'm a 
good bit of a man." 

And the pioneer thought that it was 
better to be a man first and a politician 
afterward. He was a lover of the truth. 
An old fellow out in Colorado used to 
say that a liar was worse than a horse 
thief. " For," said he, " we always 
know what to do with a horse thief but 



234 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

exactly how to deal with a liar hasn t 
been set down in our moral code." 

The greatest height attained by the 
pioneer business man of the Southwest 
was to become a slave owner. His early 
lack of education kept him out of active 
politics. In his part of the country 
there were powerful orators, educated 
for the bar, and with these men he could 
not hope successfully to contend. So 
he sat down to give to ignorance " the 
rich coloring of human chattel " — he 
bought slaves and scorned books. The 
bible was none too consoling and there- 
fore he did not read it with the zeal 
that characterized his brother who 
moved toward the Northwest. Both 
of them have passed away. Well, per- 
haps not entirely. The one of the South 



THE PIONEER BUSINESS MAN 235 

has, of course, but the Westerner still 
exists to some extent. In the new min- 
ing camp his cabin may be seen. But 
the day of his great opportunity is gone 
forever. His raw material has been 
used up. He burned out the candle of a 
former era, and now he must sit, dazzle- 
eyed, in the electric glare of progress. 

On a train, far out West, I " fell in " 
with a Congressman, not long ago, and 
he told me that his grandfather and for 
aught he could tell his great-grand- 
father had been of the pioneer business 
men in the Southwest. " My father fol- 
lowed in his footsteps," said he, "but 
having argued or read himself into an 
opposition to slavery, he moved west- 
ward. It never appeared to be his aim 
to accumulate money. He was keen at 



236 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

a bargain up to a certain point and then 
his business tact seemed to give out all 
at once and he then would slide back- 
ward down the scale and begin again 
where he had started years before. But 
as money getting was not his sole am- 
bition he never was discouraged. I 
think that he had a vague sort of hope 
that he might some time be sent to 
Congress, and I recollent that he used 
to sit up until late and read the reports 
of famous debates, and he joined a de- 
bating society but always fell down. 
He lamented his lack of education, yet 
when my time came along he thought 
that the best thing for me was first to 
learn the principles of business. He 
argued that government was nothing 
but a business and as he needed my as- 



THE PIONEER BUSINESS MAN 237 

sistance at the time the argument was 
good. We moved a number of times, 
always choosing the most unpromising 
place, it appeared to me. He said that 
it was best to deal with strangers for 
they were not likely to ask for credit 
and if they did it was not hard to refuse 
them. When he died I not only inher- 
ited his small stock of goods but much 
of his business incapacity, and about the 
first thing I did was to pick up and 
move, for as I was called by my Chris- 
tian name by every one in the neighbor- 
hood, nobody hesitated to ask me for 
credit. I grub-staked in mining camps 
until I had to do day labor in a mine 
and finally I went into politics/' 

" Did you ever learn anything from 
your father's methods?" was asked by 



238 THE AMERICAN CAVALIER 

a man who was on his way to set up a 
store somewhere in the state of Idaho. 

" Oh, yes/' answered the Congress- 
man. " I learned that no matter what 
business I might be engaged in it was 
ten to one that I could do better in 
some other line/' 

About the moldering cabin, in Ken- 
tucky, the flowers bloom every year. It 
is a venerable pile, this ashen heap of 
the past, and no one disturbs it. About 
it in the evening the cattle ring their 
mellow bells, and in the heat of the 
noon the farmer boy sits near it, be- 
neath the mulberry tree planted by the 
old Pioneer Business Man and fondly 
muses of him, over his kindliness and 
his bravery. 



Glimpses and Epigrams of 
Opie Read 

The pulpit was given to man, per- 
haps; but the first promise of eternal 
life came through a woman. 

God rewards the man that seeks to 
ease an old mother's heart. 

Youth is often too much lacking in 
judgment to estimate its surroundings 
— the dangers that lie about. Talk 
comes early but sense follows very 
slowly along. 

Ambition in the breast of the weak 
is a sore rankler. 

In the matter of acquaintanceship, 
a few minutes can sometimes accom- 
plish the work of years. 

I 



Glimpses an& Epigrams 

The truth is often hard to tell. It is 
hard to handle because it is so strange. 

A woman who devotedly loves a man 
cannot see how it is possible for the 
object of her affections to fail in the 
attempt to win the love of a goddess. 

Happiness always comes just a little 
in advance of a disappointment. 

How ruling is a faith; how it blinds 
reason, blots out incredulity. 

Two minutes can be an eternity; two 
seconds of the soul's existence can be 
a shoreless sea of time. 

In the majority of cases it's the edu- 
cated man who finds it hardest to make 
an honest living; the man who has a 
trained mind. 

It is more respectable in the eye of 
the world to be a thief than a pauper. 

Even in grief the most unpretentious 
of us shallow mortals are sometimes 

2 



of ©pie 1ReaD 

proud — proud that we have a nature 
that almost refuses to give up a sorrow. 

The love that we learn to bestow is 
the easiest love to take away. 

Faith makes a man religious; will 
makes him strong. 

A quick look, a mere glance, the 
shortest sentences within the range of 
human expression, but in that short 
sentence a full book of meaning. 

Don't fool along with affairs that are 
hopelessly tangled. Strike at some- 
thing else. 

It is a sin to laugh at a trouble. 

Endurance has its boundary lines. 

The wise man looks to the future; 
the weak man hugs the present. 

Do not destroy your natural manhood 
by talking to people whose every aim 
is to be unnatural. 
3 



(Glimpses an& Epigrams 

Religion means a life of inward 
humility and outward obedience. 

Compliments are almost worthless 
when they reach none but the flattered 
ear. 

To be somebody calls for sacrifice as 
well as ability and determination. 

Is wretchedness always tiptoeing in 
the expectancy of some new pang? 

Villainy holds a virtue when it tells 
the truth. 

There are transactions in which men 
are bettered by being beaten. 

There is more of conviction in silent 
opposites than in noisy arguments. 

The worry of a strong man is a sign 
of danger. 

That is true wisdom not indeed to 
have nothing to say, but keeping the 
something that fain would fly forth. 
4 



of ©pte "Reafc 

It pays to let revenge go. 
The coarse-grained man holds him- 
self above the opinion of those far be- 
low him, but a gentleman would value 
the good will of a dog. 

There never was a greater fallacy 
than the supposition that all men were 
born equal, inheriting the same amount 
of original sin and capable of receiv- 
ing the same degree of moral training. 
Remember that in an irregularity 
often lie some of the most precious 
merits of this life. 

A man's gone if he lets his so-called 
friend run to him with discourage- 
ments. 

Even dignity sometimes stands in 
need of advice. 

The youth whose promise in life em- 
braces the prospect of a broad scope 
should be taught that at the end of it 



Glimpses an& Epigrams 

all — this alluring rainbow — lies disap- 
pointment. 

I hold that the Lord didn't make one 
man for another man to run over. 

What is more elastic than a promise 
to wed? 

Man may be walking pleasantly with 
prosperity hooked upon his arm, talk- 
ing of the deeds they are to perform in 
common, when up gallops misfortune 
on a horse, and that is the end. 

How harder than a rock is human 
justice 

Some men might argue that it is 
difficult if not impossible for a failure 
to become a success, but all astonishing 
success has come out of previous fail- 
ure. 

A trial of joy is the easiest trial to 
bear. 

Pity is not akin to love. 
6 



of ©pie tReafc 

Nature despises the weak. 
Kindness is not always the truth 
Does nature ever forgive? 
It is awful to be companionless. 

We are more meditative when we 
have been close to nature and that 
always gives us a sort of spiritual help. 

The ancient philosophers, counseling 
contentment of the mind, had money 
loaned out at interest. It was no won- 
der that they could be contented, and, 
after all, they held the right idea of 
life: money first and philosophy after- 
ward. 

There is true religion in every phase 
of art. 

The strong man may be overthrown 
by the hoard of weaklings that envy 
has set against him. 

Ardent yearning is but a spirit of 
ambitious conquest. 
7 



Glimpses anD Bpigrama 

To resent an insult is sometimes more 
of a scandal than to let it pass. 

Earnestness is genius. 

Next in importance to the discovery 
of genius itself, is the discovery that 
genius is picking its way along the 
briary path of love, lifting a thorny 
bough in bloom to peep blushingly 
from a hiding place or boldly to tear 
through the branches out into the open 
and in honest resentment defy the won- 
dering gaze of the common eye. 

The only progressive force in the 
human family is earnestness. 

A trouble aired is lighter for the air- 
ing. It is the secret trouble that eats 
the heart. 

Time and the something that bright- 
ens hopes and softens fears gradually 
soothes affliction. 

A confession of ignorance is a step 
toward wisdom. 

8 



of ©pie 1Reafc 

To enjoy a principle we must share it 
with a friend. 

Without a certain moral force there 
can be no real and lasting achievement. 

Apathy, the sure follower of enthusi- 
asm. 

The soul of mirth is a sly mischief. 
The devil titters when men argue. 
A rocking-chair is a remembrancer 
of a mother's affection. 

A man is truest to himself when he 
performs some sort of labor no matter 
whether it is digging in the ground or 
expounding a philosophy. 

The province of greatness is not to 
enshroud but to simplify. 

Love lights a hundred torches in the 
soul of man. 

Without failure the world could 
never have realized one of its most pre- 
cious virtues— perseverance. 
9 



Glimpses an& Epigrams 

A gentleman can, at all times, stand 
in smiling conquest above a tough. 

We may tie a man's hands and feet 
but we cannot bind him so fast that he 
may not slip into slumber. 

While a gentleman respects age, he 
cannot permit age to humiliate him. 

A marriage tie cannot hold an un- 
willing mind. 

There should be a difference between 
the action of a man who is preaching 
and one engaged in getting out saw- 
logs. 

You must not be a cynic — it is an 
acknowledgment of a failure. 

Drink, — the devil's sympathy, prom- 
ises heaven, but slippers the foot — that 
treads its way to hell. 

A close acquaintance with a few 
masterful books is oftener better than a 
more pretentious education. 
10 



of ©pie IReafc 

How weak it is to sin and how strong 
to forgive. 

We sometimes fight against happi- 
ness. 

There is virtue in even a rebellious 
strength. 

Human nature respects exclusiveness. 

Aristocracy hampered by extreme 
stinginess would cut but a poor figure. 

There must be a titter in hell when 
at last man, sore and crushed, resolves 
to do his duty. 

We often miss an end simply because 
we are unable to discover it and because 
we have no one to point it out. 

There is some little truth in the wild- 
est of speculation. 

Nothing can be more charming than 
the unconscious generosity of simple 
folk. 

II 



Glimpses an& Epigrams 

The children of genius are cheapened 
by frequent parade. 

In the creation of the great tree there 
had not been a sound; all has been the 
noiseless will of God. 

To accomplish a good we must use 
the directest means. 

Hallowed books were written by men 
who lived when the ungodly sword and 
the godly pen were at war against each 
other. 

Man's first trouble was to lose his 
title to a garden. 

Everything teaches us to practice 
economy; it's the saving clause of 
life. 

It is sometimes a very difficult mat- 
ter to explain the simplest mistake. 

A consolation that comes with strife 
consoles but poorly. 

12 



of ©pie IReafc 

Falsehood gallops in riotous pleasure 
when Truth is absent. 

If a man has once stood as a servant, 
he is, if at all sensitive, ever afterwards 
afflicted with a sort of self-repression. 

Industry is no sure sign of honesty; 
"Worked like a thief," has become a 
saying. 

It is only on the stage that the villain 
wears his principles stamped upon his 
countenance. 

In thoughtless sympathy a great 
wrong may lie. 

In impudence there may lie a good 
intention and a piece of advice that 
may not be bad. 

To an unsettled mind a book is a sly 
poison; the greatest of books are but 
the records of trouble. 

If you make an equal of a man who 
is not your equal he is sure, sooner or 
later, to insult you. 
13 



Glimpses an& Epigrams 

Some great orators make you laugh 
at your own sorrow and then compel 
you to look with grief upon your own 
laughter. 

We are never so truthful as when we 
forget self. 

Frankness should always have judg- 
ment behind it. 

How time does stop and mock a 
man's impatience! 

We may learn how to express thought 
but thought itself must be born in us. 

Man's mind, you know, has two 
lobes — one embracing the horse and 
the other covering the human family 
and other little things. 

How many strange things love will 
make a man say. 

A man's a fool to leave his wife with 
a misunderstanding in her head. 

14 



of ©pie IReafc 

Of what use is an ear when you turn 
it from heart-felt praise to catch the 
unsympathetic tones of average life? 

Undue enthusiasm is a human weak- 
ness. Nature's work, with God stand- 
ing behind it, is orderly, except when 
nature destroys, and then there is fury. 

Sense not being so light of foot has a 
hard time trying to overtake wordli- 
ness and there are cases where it does 
not succeed. 

If we believed nothing except that 
which is based upon reason so plain 
that every man can see it, we would, 
indeed, be an incredulous people. 

Love comes once and is ever present 
afterward. 

Thought may come as a temptation; 
to restrain it makes us virtuous. 

Common sense always commands 
respect, for nearly every rule that gov- 
15 



Glimpses anfc Epigrams 

ems the conduct of a man is founded 
upon it. 

A rainy day makes a companion 
dearer to us, just as a dark night makes 
our fire the brighter. 

The most persistent explorer of 
motive is woman. 

One of man's greatest influences is 
to inspire silence. 

A law book without poetry behind it 
is a heap of helpless dust. 

There is in the world a genuineness 
of hospitality, a kindness which makes 
no calculation of a possible return of 
favors. 

Love knows a duty and often it 
throws away the bow and nobly takes 
up the yoke. 

A reformed man may not be the best, 
but he is never the worst. 
16 



of ©pie 1Reat> 

Ah, trouble has many a mask, which 
it puts from day to day upon our faces, 
choosing those with deeper and yet 
still deeper lines. But a young god of 
nappiness may spring up, with the com- 
ing of a new surprise, tear off the 
mask, and with a wing loaned by the 
angel of love, fan back to youth the 
aged countenance. 

To an uneasy mind any suspicion is 
reasonable. 

In the coming glory of the day when 
molten gold is poured from the black 
furnaces of the night, even the most 
doubtful must feel the spirit of the 
world's creator; and it is then that the 
heart takes fresh confidence. 

The ignorant are those who have not 
been taught to govern their emotions. 
More than half our criticisms are 
absurd. Why should I presume to 
criticise something in an atmosphere 
entirely different from mine? 
17 



(Mimpses an& Epigrams 

The soul does not steadily abide 
within us, but wanders hither and 
thirther, seeking rest; and when it re- 
turns and lights this lonely temple for 
a time, men say that we have been in- 
spired. 

The mind asks for its ambition; the 
heart begs for its life. 

Ah, the glory of being loved. But is 
there not a greater glory, the glory of 
loving? Is not hunger for love a sel- 
fishness? 

Said the preacher: If there were but 
one word to express all the qualities of 
God I should select the word forgive- 
ness. 

What is the sea but the tears that 
have been shed by the sorrowing chil- 
dren of men? The sea has its tide and 
what is that but the emotion, the grief- 
swell that is still alive in those briny 
drops? 

18 



of ©pie IReafc 

Reason is the off-spring of wisdom, 
but it has always been a coward. 

Nothing is much crueler than to 
remind one of ingratitude; it is like 
shooting from behind a rock; it is hav- 
ing one completely at your mercy. 

Was there ever a future that was not 
prepared to take care of itself? And 
is there a past that can be helped? 
Then let us fasten our mind to the 
present. 

To be wholly respectable a man must 
give up many an enjoyment. 

Having failed to achieve the highest 
success in a chosen calling we can find 
contentment in the middle ground of a 
second choice, for then the heart has 
had its day of suffering. 

In matters that tend to lead the heart 
astray we rarely think until too late, 
and then each thought is an added 
pain. 

19 



Glimpses an& Epigrams 

There are always two hopes walking 
with a doubt, one on each side, but a 
certainty walks alone. 

We are sometimes afraid to feel an 
unaccountable buoyancy lest it may 
foretell a coming fall. I have known 
Christians who had prayed for sanctity 
in the sight of the Lord, to tremble at 
happiness, afraid that it might be a 
trap set by the devil. 

Worry is a bad producer, but a good 
critic. 

When the teachings of a man's 
mother leave him unfinished there isn't 
a great deal of encouragement for the 
wife. 

Admiration of the powerful is felt 
alike by the savage and the cultivated 
man. 

The night is the mother of many an 
imp that the day refuses to father. 
20 



of ©pie IReafc 

Do something, see something, feel 
the throb rather than the dead pressure 
of life. 

We are putting too much weight on 
what we can buy for money, unmindful 
of the fact that the best things of this 
life are free. Ah, but the trouble is 
we don't seem to need the free things. 
When we stand in real want of them 
we die. 

Love may be a divine essence, calm 
as God-ordained peace, when it flows 
from the heart, or it may be — wolfish. 

Behind an error of the heart there 
stands a sophist, a Libanius, to offer a 
specious consolation — a voice ever 
ready to say, "It was not your fault; 
you do not create your own desires, 
neither can you control them." 

A man looks upon his wife as a part 
of himself; and a man will lie even to 
himself. 

n 



Glimpses anfc Epigrams 

When a man has once been a "serv- 
ant" of the people, he is never satisfied 
to fall back among the powerless "mas- 
ters." 

There is no greater bore than the 
well-balanced man. He wears us out 
with his evenness. 

The mind is God-given, and every 
good book bears the stamp of divinity. 
Books are the poor man's riches — the 
tramp's magnificent coach. With them 
every man is a king; without them 
every man is a slave. I had rather 
live in prison where there are books, 
than in a palace destitute of them. 
They reduce a dreary and barren hour 
into a minute of ripe delight. 

Any tie of life that holds us to some 
one, although at times its straining 
may fall little short of agony, is better 
far than slip-shod freedom from re- 
sponsibility. 

22 



of ©pie IReafc 

Love is sometimes invisible as well 
as blind. 

Mysticism is too grand to be grasped 
at once. It is the key to all wisdom; 
and there can be no sorrow when all 
men are just and wise, for justice re- 
lieves the wants of the body and wis- 
dom will provide against grief. 

There is something new in your 
eyes, something I never saw there be- 
fore — so tender that your bantering 
words seem strangely to belie you. 
Have you been gazing into sweet coun- 
tenances? Or perhaps Doctor, you 
have caught the reflection of the first 
light in a baby's eyes. 

Do you know what is the noblest 

office that poetry exercises upon life? 

It prevents the marriage of many a man 

and woman; it demands love first, and 

hen accepts marriage. 

A confidence is more valuable when 
we have fought to restrain it, 
23 



©Itmpses anfc Eptstam* 

Behind all mystery there is power. 

How dear stupid people are — -they 
are sometimes our dearest ones. 
About the only thing they can do is 
to make themselves dear. 

Art is a selfishness; and so is every 
high-born longing in the breast of man. 
Philanthropy itself cannot escape the 
accusation. To give to the needy flat- 
ters the conscience. 

It is always interesting to hear what 
a stranger has to say of one's old 
aquaintances — if he be inclined to say 
mean things. 

While men may build the houses 
and make the laws, it is the whim that 
makes the social atmosphere. 

Who of us is appointed to set up the 
standard and gauge of naturalness? 

Plain truths are tiresome. They 
never lend grace to a conversation. A 
24 



of ©pie IReafc 

truth, to be interesting, must be whim- 
sical or so blunt that it jolts 

Nothing can be madder than misled 
labor. 

Wisdom lends its conceit to the 
aged. 

Women are the first to show the con- 
tempt with which wealth regards 
poverty, the first to turn with resent- 
ment upon former friends who have 
been left in the race for riches, the 
first to feel the overbearing spirit that 
money stirs. 

A vigorous nation buys and sells and 
fights; but a nation that is threatened 
with decay paints and begs. 

Gentleness maybe a passion that has 
sunk into a dreamy sleep. 

However much we may respect our 
own necessity to tell a lie, we do not 
recognize the necessity in other people. 

25 



Glimpses an& Epigrams 

The lake seemed now a deep-blue 
elegy, now a limpid lyric, varying in 
hue with the shifting of a luminous 
fleece-work, far above. 

At best, happiness is only the bright 
side of trouble. 

I hate a man that sneers at my coun- 
try; I pity the fool who says that any 
responsibility is too great for us. All 
thrones trembled when the Declaration 
was signed. 

A political contest would coarsen a 
seraph. 

The heart cannot express a geat joy 
until it has felt a deep sorrow. 

Things that we most doubt sometimes 
come to pass, and then we wonder why 
we should have questioned them. 

There is always a ruffian standing 

behind a tree in the dark, with club 

lifted, on tip-toe, to knock an ambition 

on the head. Ambition is a drunken- 

26 



ot ©pie iReaD 

ness, but man is noblest when he is 
tired by another sort of intoxication — 
when he forgets himself in his love for 
some other human being. 

Things that come to us without a 
fight are not worth having. The 
world's only glory has come out of 
battle. The Cross was useless till 
blood was poured upon it. 

It's a curse to be poor. It gives no 
opportunity to be generous, sneers at 
truth and calls virtue a foolish little 
thing. It is the philosopher, with 
money out at interest, that smiles upon 
the contentment and blessedness of the 
poor man. 

Judgement, hope's cold critic. 

The lines of art and the lines of bread 
are rarely found on the same page. 

The coward ever seems to fear the 
light of an open eye quite as much as 
he does the gleaming of a weapon. 
27 



Glimpses an& Epigrams 

Love — souls waving in a perfumed 
atmosphere, touching each other. 

The sea sounded the deeper notes of 
its endless opera. 

What is it to die? Wise men prove 
to their own satisfaction that there is 
no life after death, but where is the 
proof that shall satisfy .ne? I want 
their proof. They have none. 

In some distant place where the land 
was dry a shower of rain had fallen, 
and the air was quickened with the 
coming of that dusty, delicious smell, 
that reminiscent incense which more 
than the perfume of flower or shrub 
takes us back to the lanes and the sweet 
loitering places of youth. 

The love that we learn to feel is just 
as strong and is calmer and often 
sweeter than the love that leaps out 
from an ambush and smites us, 
28 



of ©pie IReafc 

Let us not prattle a resentment in 
palliation of a duty neglected. 

This is an age in which a man may 
not tell most truth but when he de- 
mands that most truth shall be told. 
Realism has been taken up as a fad. 
But what is more real than the beauti- 
ful? 

Self-made men rarely worship the 
past, for to them the past was hard and 
gnarly. 

Nothing is more inspiring than to see 
innocence gazing upon nature. 

On this earth, the strongest of all 
claims is the sentimental claim; it is 
delicious to know that some one has a 
sentimental sight draft against you — a 
judgment note of the heart. 

Our happiness lies not in what others 
think, but in what we feel. 
29 



Glimpses anb jSpiarams 

We are mighty apt to believe that 
there's great wisdom mixed up in a 
mind we can't understand. Let a 
preacher mystify us and we cry, "In- 
spired!" 

You can always gamble on a woman's 
pride standing square against her inter- 
est. 

As long as the spirit of the child re- 
mains with the man, he loves the 
country. All children are fond of the 
woods. The deep shade holds a mys- 
tery. 

The marriage veil is sometimes the 
winding sheet of art. 

The gospel of content builds poor- 
houses. 

The teacher may not be the father of 
a thought held by the young but he is 
the guardian of it. 

How blinder than a bat in the sun- 
light is human faith. How much proof, 
30 



of ©pie 1Reafc> 

and how much argument are required 
in a court of law, and yet in spiritual 
things how thin a pretext man believes 
to be a God-sent truth. 

Trouble paints strong pictures. Ah, 
but the paint eats the canvas. Trouble 
uses no soft oil in its art. 

The domain of silence is free. There 
no claims are marked off; a privilege 
awaits every comer. 

I don't believe that the Creator found 
it essential to set up an opposite to 
himself. 

Love — Ah, sweet and perfumed 
poison, beyond the skill of the chem- 
ist's analyzing eye: mystic contagion, 
how defiant of all self-summoned power 
to eradicate. Older than the first gray 
hair on the head of new-made man, and 
yet with a youth younger than the first 
breath of a child; the scoff of the cold 
3i 



(Bltmpscs ant) jSpi^ramd 

in heart; the torturer of the strong; 
the despair of the wise; the hope of 
the fool; the glory of the world. 

Ah, after this life, what then? To be 
remembered. But what serves this 
purpose? A perpetuation of our inter- 
ests. After you, your son — the man 
dies, but the name lives. No one of 
any sensibility can look calmly on the 
extinction of his name. 

Trade is the realization of logic, and 
success is the fruit of philosophy. 
People wonder at the achievements of 
a man whom they take to be ignorant; 
but that man has a secret intelligence 
somewhere, and if they could discover 
it they would imitate him. The states- 
man is but a business man. Behind 
the great general is the nation's back- 
bone, and that backbone is a financier. 

Over our gravest misfortunes we do 
not brood with words, but with pic- 
tures. 

32 



of ©pie IReafc 

Behind one's own words is a flimsy 
place to hide; they are a lattice-work 
and men see through them. 

Ah, many days must fall upon a sad 
memory before it is sweetened. 

Humor is the cream that rises to the 
surface of the "milk of human kind- 
ness." 

Out of culture may come a pale 
beauty, but a poet to be immortal must 
be mad! 

Poverty is the only really shrewd 
fellow, the only genuine critic of life. 

How hallowed and sun-glinted that 
school life now seems to me. Many a 
grave has been opened and closed, the 
roots of many a greenbrier is embedded 
in the ashes of a heart that was once 
alive with fire, the fierce passion of life. 
The sun is still shining, and the arch of 
God's many-hued lithograph is still 
seen in the sky, and hearts have fire 
33 



Glimpses anD Epigrams 

shut within them, but I wonder if the 
sun is as bright as it was in the long 
ago, if the rainbow is as purple, if the 
fire in the heart is as glowing. Ah, and 
I know that my grandchildren, in the 
far away years to come, will lean feebly 
upon the gate and wonder if the world 
is as full of light as it was. Every 
emotion you have felt you may know 
has been felt by other men. It is this 
that makes nearly all poetry seem old; 
it is this that sends true poetry to the 
human heart. 

The ugly are not truer than the beau- 
tiful. 

Fortune is vested with a peculiar dis- 
crimination. It appears more often to 
favor the unjust than the just. Ability 
and a life of constant wooing do not 
always win success, for luck, the fac- 
totum of fortune, often bestows in one 
minute a success which a lifetime of 
stubborn toil could not have achieved. 
34 



of ©pie 1ReaD 

Mathematics was the invention of 
man, but speech was God-given. 

Among those who have failed, we 
often find the highest type of manhood. 

A severe countenance is not a com- 
munication from God, while laughter 
might bespeak His holy presence. If 
God is always frowning, why have we 
flowers and streams that flash and sing 
in the sunlight? Man must guard 
against trivial things, it is true; but 
good humor is not trivial — it is the 
voice of health. 

Justice ought to be stronger than 
friendship or even blood relationship. 

Sincerity expects a reward, as a 
rule, and when a man is sincere at his 
own expense, there is something about 
him to admire. 

In the sturdy and stubborn affairs of 
life, there is no hope for the man who 
believes that newness of expression is 
35 



Glimpses ant) Epigrams 

an essential grace. If his originality 
is striking, men will call him a crank; 
if it is not striking they will say he is 
dull. 

To heal the sick is the most noble of 
all arts — one that our Saviour prac- 
ticed. 

There must be a reserve force behind 
all forms of art. It is art to conceal a 
strength, to create the impression that 
you are not doing your best. 

A man thinks more of you in the 
long run if you compel him to bow to 
you than if you permit him to put his 
arm on your shoulder. 

It is better to find contentment, even 
in a dream, than to snap our nerves in 
two, straining to reach an impossible 
happiness. 

If a man is disposed by nature to do 
right, the carrying out of his intentions 
does not require a constant effort. 

36 



of ©pie 1Reat> 

Flattery is an exaggeration, but can 
the most gifted flatterer exaggerate the 
brightness of the sun? 

Ah, how long success lies waiting, 
and how rusty it has grown when some- 
times we find it! 

He" who has suffered in childhood, 
and who in after life has walked hand 
in hand with disappointment, and is 
then not sensitive, is a brute. 

But was there ever a man who, in the 
very finest detail, lived a life of perfect 
truth and freedom from all selfishness? 
One, and He was nailed to the cross, 
to die — for liars and thieves. 

Your city belle may be cold, but she 
cannot hope to rival the imperious 
chilliness of the backwoods queen. 
The rough homage of the man with his 
trousers in his boots inspires more of 
contemptuous loftiness in the mind of 
the country belle than the polished 
37 



Glimpses an& Epigrams 

worship of a cavalier could instill in 
the heart of a beauty celebrated by two 
continents. 

The first frost had fallen but it had 
been so light that the cotton stalk 
seemed to stand in surprise, not know- 
ing whether to curl up its leaves in 
obedience to the warning chill or to 
hold up its head and open its top boll, 
but the sycamore tree, more easily dis- 
couraged, threw down its leaves and 
waved its bare arms in the evening's 
long-drawn sigh. 

/ An actor is of the present and a 
writer may be of the future. 

I had rather stand high as the ex- 
ponent of any art that I might choose 
than to have all the money that could 
be heaped about me. 

Shakespeare — the Bible's wise 
though sometimes sportive child. 

38 



of ©pie IReafc 

Two great teachers, one a man «* 
books, of engaging fancy and bri^nt 
illustration; the other a child of nature 
—a man who can feel the pulse of a 
leaf, who can hear the beating heart of 
a tree. 

We are never tired of a man sc> long 
as we can laugh at him. 

Women may be persistent but they 
are quick to recognize the impossible. 

An acknowledgement of a fault is 
not within itself virtue. The fool's 
recourse is to call himself a fool, to up- 
braid himself, curse himself and then 
in graciousness to pardon himself. 
You might as well reason with a rattle- 
snake, striking at you— might as well 
seek to temporize and argue with a dog 
drooling hydrophobic foam, as to tell 
the human heart what it ought to do. 
Reason is a business matter and it can 
make matches, but it cannot m Jce love. 
39 



Glimpses anD Epigrams 

Words are the trademarks of the 
goods stored on the mind, and a flashy- 
expression proclaims the flimsy trinket. 

She walked in advance of me holding 
a light high above her head, and how 
like an angel she looked, the darkness 
parting to let her pass. 

Her hair was as black as the outskirts 
of a moonless night. 

Rose-bushes, heavy with the senti- 
ment of June, and wet with the sweet 
moisture of a moon-lighted night, 
drooped over the garden fences. The 
mocking-bird, sleepless creature, sang 
to his mate, who, quiet in the contem- 
plation of the cares of approaching 
maternity, sat on her nest. 

Can we commit an innocent error, an 
error that will lie asleep and never rise 
up to confront us? 

Repetition may make a sentiment 
trite, but words spoken to encourage 
40 



ot ©pie IReaS 

an anxious heart do not lose their 
freshness. 

To a thoughtful mind there is more 
of interest in decay than in progress. 
"Decline and Fall" is a greater book 
than could have been written on the 
"Origin and Rise." 

And it was oratory that spread the 
great news of redemption — the native 
force of Peter and the cultivated grace 
of Paul. Yes, the men of order and of 
the text book condemned Him to 
death, but borne upon the eloquence 
that flew from the heart of impulsive 
man, His name was carried to the ends 
of the earth. 

Most any man can support a sorrow, 
but the man who can restrain a joy has 
shown the completest victory over self. 

Let a man get sick and he feels that 
the world is against him; let him get 
well and wear poor clothes, and he will 
41 



Glimpses an& Epigrams 

find that the world doesn't think 
enough of him to set itself against him 
the world doesn't know him at all. 

A sort of self-education makes a man 
adventurous in his talk, when a more 
systematic training might inflict him 
with the dullness of precision. 

Youth and love — when we grow out 
of one and forget the other, there's not 
much left to live for. 

To desire commendation is of itself 
a merit. 

Once joke with a woman, and her 
impudence — which she mistakes for wit 
— leaps over all differences in ages. 

Genius is the bloom that bursts out 
at the top of commonplace humanity. 

The victim of a king's displeasure is 
not insignificant. 

42 



ot ©pie 1Rea& 

We haven't long to stay here, and 
nothing sweetens our sojourn so much 
as forgiveness. 

"Madam," he said, "all that a mar- 
ried woman wants with a church is to 
hit her husband on the head with it." 

The man who is not ready to assume 
will never accomplish anything, and 
from a lower station must be content 
to contemplate the success of those 
who were less delicate. 

To elevate the stage is to make it 
natural. Scenery often serves to em- 
phasize an emptiness. 

It all depends on the way you go at 
a thing. Any calling can be made 
offensive. 

Just as a man thinks a woman is 
stronger than a lion she tunes up and 
cries. 

43 



Glimpses anfc Epigrams 

There are times when a man would 
be excusable for being the echo of the 
devil. 

At some time of life, we are all 
enigmas unto ourselves; the mystery 
of being, the ability to move, and the 
marvelous something we call emotion, 
startles us and drives us into a specu- 
lative silence. 

Soft, but forced, tones of kindness 
burn worse than harshness. 

Flattery was intended for women, 
but they don't look for it as much as 
men do, and are not so deeply affected 
when they find it. 

The real blessings of this life come 
through justice and not through im- 
pulsive mercy. 

The sternly practical have termed 
imagination a disease, a branch of 
mistletoe marking the unsoundness of 
the tree. 

44 



of ©pie IReafc 

There is an atmosphere that pro- 
motes gallantry, breeds a gentle pride 
in self; and that gentle pride inspires 
generosity. 

It gets mighty tiresome when a man 
is compelled to do everything except 
something he feels like doing. 

I don't know of anything more un- 
reasonable than a warm-weather cold. 
It's like a fellow with a high voice, 
singing out of tune in church. 

How quick the heart is to give all 
nature a tint of its own hue. 

Who is so frenzied a religionist as 
the man that has been an infidel; who 
is so visionary a spiritualist as one that 
has turned from materialism? 

The world seems to be holding its 
breath, waiting for something to hap- 
pen; it always appears so when there is 
a lull in the air just at sunrise. 
45 



Glimpses an& Epigrams 

A simple kindness of heart is a wis- 
dom, while viciousness, though it may- 
be possessed by a philosopher, is a 
stupid ignorance. In my mind a satir- 
ist is the most despicable creature that 
lives. And history teaches us that he 
dies abjectedly. Addison, holding 
until the last his gracious faculties, 
died a beautiful death; Dean Sv/ift 
rotted at the top. That part of a man 
which tantalizes his fellow man, is 
soonest to decay. The sting of a wasp 
dies last, but the sting of a man dies 
first. 

We sometimes wound a life-long 
friend with a word that would have no 
effect upon a mere acquaintance. 

Any woman can learn to play a 
piano, to speak Italian and to make an 
attempt at painting, but every woman 
cannot be a good companion. 

Reason, when slower than action, is 
a miserable cripple. 

46 



of ©pie fReafc 

The best of us have cause to fear the 
man we have placed too much confi- 
dence in. We have made him our 
master. 

One of the penalties of wealth is that 
a rich man is forced constantly to 
fumble about in the dark, feeling for 
some one whose touch may inspire con- 
fidence. 

Books are the records of human suf- 
fering. Every great book is an ache 
from a heart and a pain-throb from a 
brain. 

A quick judgment is nearly always 
wrong, yet it is better than a slow judg- 
ment that allows itself to be imposed 
upon. 

What an error it is to suppose that 
one can actually read character. 

At times and in some men an under- 
appraisal of self is a virtue, but more 
47 



Glimpses an& Epigrams 

often it is a crime committed against 
one's own chance of prosperity. The 
people's candidate is the man who 
loudest avows his fitness for the office. 

We don't want brain enough to cover 
the heart like cold ashes heaped on a 
fire. 

Unless a man has something to lift, 
he can never find out how strong he is. 

A weak man uses a weak word in 
apology for a weak character. 

Isn't it strange that a woman is so 
bold with her husband and so backward 
with her son — about expressing her 
mind? 

Perhaps it isn't intended that the 
noblest shall always be the happiest. 

An orator can be trained down to a 
point too fine — it may weaken his pas- 
sion, dim his fire with too much judg- 
48 



of ©pie 1Rea& 

ment, hem him in with too much 
criticism and compel him to dodge. I 
think that it was Greek art that kept 
Ben Jonson from creating great char- 
acters. The perfection of Greek form 
rendered it impossible for him to give 
us anything save talking moralities. 

Traveling unquestionably gathers 
knowledge, but the man who reads has 
ever a feeling that he is the proper 
critic of the man who has simply ob- 
served. 

Happiness will not bear a close in- 
spection; to be flawless it must be 
viewed from a distance — we must look 
forward to something longed for, or 
backward to some time remembered. 

The public is greedy for scandal, but 
looks with suspicion and coldness upon 
a correction. 

Analysis is the dagger that lets the 
life-blood out of fiction's heart. Ana- 
49 



<3Umpses ant) Epigrams 

lyze a passion — pick it to pieces, and it 
blows away. We must not analyze an 
oil painting, but must be satisfied with 
art — with deception, for all art has 
been termed sublime deception. 

We all have a certain aim, a certain 
idealistic end to accomplish. In youth 
the bright mark is almost within reach, 
but as we grow older, the mark, less 
bright, recedes. Those who fancy that 
they have reached the mark find after a 
while that it is a delusion. 

Let us say that sometimes the devil 
giveth and the Lord taketh away. 

How many people hear the songs of 
birds and are too dull to be thrilled. 

A wild vine, when it is taken from 
the woods and planted in the yard, 
where it is watered and cultivated, 
grows very fast; faster than if it had 
first cof~* up in the yard. 
50 



of ©pie IReafc 

A man is often contented with his 
misery and proud of his disgrace. 

Why is a man so weak of decision 
and so strong of regret? 

Sometimes a beginning is so delight- 
ful that we are afraid to look toward 
the end. 

If there comes a time when men are 
worth their salt and women are worth 
their pepper humanity will be well 
seasoned. 

Ah! how many hearts are aching for 
a love that the law has edged about 
with Duty! 

The attractive fades, but how eternal 
is the desolate! 

A new community worships material 
things; and if it pays tribute to an 
idea, it must be that idea which ap- 
peals quickest to the eye — to the com- 
moner senses. 

51 



(Glimpses ant) Epigrams 

Money professes great love for the 
law, and not without cause. The rich 
man thinks that the law is his; and the 
poor man says, "It was not made for 
me." 

Our friends mark out a course for us, 
and if we depart from it and do some- 
thing better than their specifications 
call for, they become our enemies. 

It is not necessary to plant the tree 
in order to enjoy the fruit. 

The man who does not love the 
woods would seek to crucify a god. 
Poetry and soul do not demand that we 
shall live there, but they do enforce a 
reverence and a love for the grandeur 
of a tree, and the beauty of a flower 
that seems to have stolen away from 
the gaze of the vulgar. The city roars 
a groan, but the leaves sweetly mur- 
mur; we chase a dollar along the side- 
walk, but in the deep heaven of the 
woods we feel the presence of God. 
52 



of ©pie IReafc 

Nature held up a pink rose in the 
east, and the hill-tops were glowing, 
while the valleys were yet dark. 

I cannot conceive of a much grander 
pleasure than to be able to speak well 
of a man. Human nature is too much 
inclined to cross a muddy street to tell 
a man of a fault, rather than to stop 
him on the sidewalk and tell him of a 
virtue. 

No matter who drops out, the affairs 
of this life go on just the same. A 
man becomes so identified with a busi- 
ness that people think it couldn't be 
run without him. He dies, and the 
business — improves. 

We have our struggles, but, like the 
hero of Thermopylae when told that the 
enemy's arrows were so thick that they 
obscured the sun, we must congratulate 
ourselves that we can fight in the 
shade. When misfortunes stand thick, 
we can knock more of them down at one 
53 



Glimpses anfc Eptoranu 

blow. Samson could not have killed 
so many of his enemies had they been 
scattered. 

Marriage is a noisy failure or a quiet 
blessing. 

The poets have said that the sweetest 
music makes no sound. 

Who is so humble as a proud woman 
that loves? 

Our friends instead of being able to 
help us, are themselves in need of aid. 

I have acquired one great piece of 
knowledge, which, had I not received 
a regular training, might have seemed 
to me as the arrogance of ignorance, 
and that is the fact that profound 
knowledge hurts the imagination. Of 
course I had read this — but ascribed it 
to prejudice. I know now, however, 
that it is true; and I would take care 
not to over-educate the boy with an 
54 



of ©pie IReafc 

instinct for art. His technique would 
destroy his creation. And take it in 
the matter of writing. I believe in cor- 
rectness, but it is a fact that when a 
writer becomes a purist he conforms 
but does not create. After all, I be- 
lieve that what's within a man will 
come out regardless of his training. 
There may be mute, inglorious Mil- 
tons, but Art struggles for expression. 
The German woman worked in a field 
and had no books, but she brought 
tears to the eyes of the Empress, with 
a little poem, dug up out of the ground. 

To forgive the weakness of a sin is 
sometimes a strength; but sometimes 
forgiveness is of itself a weakness, 
almost a sin. 

Bread may be the staff of life, but 
art is the wing of the soul. 

We are made narrow-minded by our 
surroundings. When a man is gloomy 
he thinks that the world has gone 

55 



<3Ump8es an& Epigrams 

wrong, that life is a mistake, that 
creation took the wrong shoot from the 
beginning; but let him be prosperous 
and in good health, and he is then 
ready meekly to acknowledge that God 
is right. 

Self-ridicule, the keen scalpel that 
lances our swollen prominence, that 
cuts through the skin and shows how 
watery is the blood of our own narrow 
yearning. 

Man may reason and find conversion 
in the light of his own argument; 
ideas, like a flight of birds, may fill 
this modern air; science, thought, ex- 
actness of speech, precision of conduct, 
a mountain top of intellectual training 
may be reached — and yet, a strong 
man's love, fashioned unconsciously 
and then suddenly electrified with life, 
is as much of a madness as it was when 
the breath of Almighty creation had 
just been breathed upon the earth, 

56 



of ©pie 1Rea& 

There is more religion in a bird's 
nest, in a shade sanctified by pure air, 
than there is in a thousand churches; 
there is more of the praise of God in 
the song of one bird than there is in a 
million human hallelujahs. 

At last, worn out with serving as 
pall-bearer to his own dead spirit, he 
lay asleep — beflowered, roses on his 
breast, a broken heart perfumed. 

Ignorance always credits itself with 
shrewdness. 

If we die suddenly, at night, dream- 
ing a sweet dream, we may continue 
the dream through eternity — heaven. 
If we die dreaming a troubled dream, 
we may go on dreaming it after death 
— hell Then let us strive to live con- 
ducively to pleasant dreams. 

Winning is easy to the man. that 
wins. 

57 



Glimpses anfc Epigrams 

A tender conscience has no more 
show in business than a peg-leg has in 
a foot-race. 

There is no genius except it be 
whole-souled desire and persistent 
effort. The genius works late. When 
he goes to bed the oil in his lamp is 
low. He sometimes works with the 
energy of despair, and at last sees suc- 
cess through a mist of tears. 

The humorous air is a stumbling 
block in the way of character reading. 
A man can hide so much behind a 
comical expression that his true nature 
cannot be seen. 

A woman has a contempt for the 
hope of a man. She is a materialist; 
she wants immediate results. 

One may have ever so hairy an ear, 
and yet the gossip of the neighborhood 
will force its way in 

58 



ot ©pie IReafc 

It is to fiction that we owe some of 
our greatest blessings. The refine- 
ment of Greece rested not upon her 
realities, but upon her fancies, for all 
her elegant realities grew out of her 
great fancies. A rough man can tell 
you a fact — rough men are full of facts 
— but he cannot give you an ennobling 
fancy. 

In an adjustment of the human 
heart's estate, to receive only friend- 
ship in return for a loan of love is a 
painful compromise. 

A glimpse of the dawn-couch, pur- 
ple with the sun's resurrection. 

It is not by design that men become 
philosophers; for to be a true philoso- 
pher, one must have suffered. 

While profound men grieve and 
waste away over a crushing loss, the 
man of simple faith finds rest. 
59 



Glimpses ant) Epigrams 

He held the position of professional 
humorist, and thus he spoke of his call- 
ing: "Humor requires quick descrip- 
tion — a portrait made by one scratch 
of the pen; an insight as sudden as a 
flash, and yet must all along show a 
profound respect for the reader's im- 
agination. You must permit a man to 
see a point, yet you must not show it 
to him. You must leave him under the 
impression that he is a discoverer. 
Straight literature is altogether differ- 
ent. You can yield to mood; you can 
be gay or sad, light or heavy, prolix or 
condensed; but the humorist — the un- 
fortunate painter whose colors must 
always be bright — kills his gentler im- 
pulses, and tickles the public's nose 
with the perfumed feather of a red 
bird." 

Patience is the very perfection of in- 
dustry. 

A man needs something beyond his 
needs; there are times when we look 
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for something aside from our own 
natural forces; there are wants which 
nature was ages in supplying. Look 
at tobacco. The Greeks missed it as 
they sat deep in the discussion of their 
philosophy. They did not know what 
it was they were missing — but they 
knew that it was something and I 
know it was tobacco. 

Poetic possessions are the richest to 
one who has a soul. 

There were sounds, the creaking of 
wagons and the tones of man, speaking 
to caution his horses, going down a 
steep hill, but these sounds served 
only as the punctuation marks of 
silence. 

The mind could exist and be observ- 
ing even if the heart were dead. Some 
of the world's great men are heartless. 
A man to be great in the esteem of the 
public must be cold — he must con- 
61 



Glimpses anfc Epigrams 

stantly keep his mind on himself, must 
sacrifice friends, smother emotion — he 
must kill his heart. 

There is no grasp strong enough to 
hold a love that has been given as a 
duty. Love is sublimely selfish; it 
doesn't take kindly to duty. Duty is 
a yoke and love wants a bow. 

We all have two selves, one self does 
wrong, and the other self, which is a 
sort of indulgent parent, suffers over 
it. 

A wise man is always a little afraid 
that his friend may follow his advice. 

The man who keeps his emotions 
and his impulses under too much con- 
trol, is a hypocrite. 

That dear fallacy, that silken toga 
in which many of us have wrapped our- 
selves — the belief that a good score at 
college means immediate success out 
in the world. 

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Fancy always playing must play well 
at times. 

In the country where the streams are 
so pure that they look like strips of 
sunshine, where the trees are so ancient 
that one almost stands in awe of them, 
where the moss, so old that it is gray, 
and hanging from the rocks in the 
ravine looks like venerable beards 
growing on faces that have been har- 
dened by years of trouble— in such a 
country, even the most slouching 
clown, walking as though stepping 
over clods when plowing where the 
ground breaks up hard, has in his un- 
tutored heart a love of poetry. He 
may not be able to read— may never 
have heard the name of a son of gen- 
ius, but in the evening, when he stands 
on a purple "knob," watching the soul 
of day sink out of sight in a far-away 
valley, he is a poet. 

It is in the love we give that we find 
our happiness. 

63 



Glimpses anb ^Epigrams 

With reason you catch a reasoner 
here and there, but the people are 
caught by entertainment, by word- 
flights, by jolts, by unexpected utter- 
ances. Reason with the average man 
and you lead him to surmise what you 
are going to say, and then he loses 
respect for your intelligence. But 
pour out words upon him, dazzle him 
with pictures, and he thinks that he 
sees an inspiration. 

Ah, the old road, older than the lane, 
the first pathway made by the foot of 
man, bestrewn with the human heart's 
first tender foibles, with the lamps of 
man's earliest fancy burning here and 
there and with darkness lying cold 
between them — the uneven road of 
love. 

We must observe form and recognize 
the rules which good taste has drawn, 
but after all the finest form and the 
most nearly perfect rule is an inborn 

6 4 



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judgment. The merest accident may- 
thrill a dull man with genius. 

Nobody has so good an argument as 
the scold. 

What a reproach it is to a woman to 
see a man think! She must stir him 
up, scatter his faculties. 

No matter how you may be situated, 
remember that you are not a pioneer; 
no human strain is new. 

A novel-reader is never wholly a bad 
man, for to be a lover of novels he 
must enter into the soul of the work. 
He must sympathize with the afflicted 
and rejoice with the happy character. 

To be young and to place the proper 
estimate upon it — how magnificent! 

Inspirations have their own time, and 
we should be thankful for their coming 
rather than to carp at their lateness. 

65 



Glimpses anD Bpiarams 

Any heart that wants to be forgiven 
is one of God's hearts. 

Art drops on its worn knees and 
prays to business, and literature begs 
it for a mere nod. 

In this world there are harder hearts 
than hearts of oak, for through the 
oaken heart there flows a gentle sap 
that tips with velvet buds the winter- 
stiffened twigs. 

The shrewd business man, whose 
success we all admire, cannot, in jus- 
tice to his business, carry absolute truth 
in one hand and a price-list in the 
other. 

A frown trailing the skirts of a smile. 

Gratitude — a rarer quality than gen- 
ius. 

Nothing is wonderful. The mere 
fact that a thing happens proves that 
there is about it no element of the 
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marvelous. The strange thing is the 
one that does not occur. When it does 
occur it ceases to be strange. 

I am not so much of a scientist that 
I am a fool. No, but you are so much 
of a fool that you are not a scientist. 

In associating with the young the old 
often catch the spirit of youth. The 
young man helps the old man to think 
of pleasant things. An old tree is 
grander when a sapling grows beside 
it. 

Sweetness, purity and modesty — the 
Divine Master could not give to a 
woman three graces more beautiful. 

Boys are taught to be honorable and 
girls are taught to be virtuous. And 
the boy is permitted to be honorable 
without being virtuous. So therein 
lies the social story of this life. 

Religion, pure and holy though it 
may be, must keep pace with the 
6 7 



Glimpses anfc Epigrams 

shrewdness and the intelligence of the 
world in order that it may protect itself 
against the snares of the world. Inno- 
cence is not safety; wisdom alone is 
protection. 

Faith is well enough, but simple faith 
is the reverse of reason; faith bats its 
eyes like an owl in the glare of a light. 

This neighborhood was very much 
like the rest of the world-lacking heart 
only in places. 

A mother may plan the marriage of 
her daughter, for that is romantic, but 
she looks with an anxious eye upon the 
marriage of her son, for that is serious. 

American aristocracy is the most 
grinding of all aristocracies, for the 
reason that a man's failure to reach its 
grade is attributable to himself alone. 

Inspiration is not of constant flame; 
the fire dies down, and the coals are 
covered with ashes, and it blazes not 
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until more fuel is brought. Blow not 
the coals; wait until the fuel doth come. 

True rhetoric is the voice of God. 

The devil deadens our senses with a 
sweet perfume that he may better steal 
the soul. 

We meet many persons and become 
well acquainted with them, and yet 
never feel that they belong to our at- 
mosphere. They are not necessary to 
the story of our lives, and yet that 
atmosphere of which they are not 
really a part, would not be wholly 
complete without them. They stand 
ready for our side talks; sometimes 
they even flip a sentiment at us, we 
catch it, trim it with ribbons and hand 
it back. They keep it; we forget. 

Experience doesn't always make us 
wise. It sometimes tends to weaken 
rather than to make us strong. It 
might make freshness stale; it is a thief 

69 



Glimpses an& Epigrams 

that steals enthusiasm; it enjoins 
caution at the wrong time. 

The night was hot, the slow air fum- 
bled among the leaves. Far in the 
sultry west was an occasional play of 
lightning, the hot eye of day peeping 
back into the sweltering night. 

Moonbeams fell through the window, 
a ladder of light upon which a spirit 
might well descend to earth. 

Sometimes the soul is impatient of 
the body's dogged hold on life, and 
steals away to view its future domain, 
to draw in advance upon its coming 
freedom — now lingering, now swifter 
than a hawk, — and then it comes back 
and we say that we have been absent- 
minded. 

Exact memory is not the vital part 
of true culture; it is the absorption of 
the idea rather than the catching of 
the words. 

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Sometimes a soothing spirit which, 
the sun could not evoke from its bound- 
less fields of light comes out of the 
dark bosom of a cloud. A bright day 
promises so much, so builds our hopes, 
that our keenest disappointments seem 
to come on a radiant morning, but on 
a dismal day, when nothing has been 
promised, a straggling pleasure is acci- 
dentally found and is pressed closer to 
the senses because it was so unex- 
pected. 

The noblest quality of man is mercy; 
the most godly quality of man is justice. 

A woman's duty is not so clearly 
marked out now as it used to be. As 
long as man was permitted to mark it 
out her duty was clear enough— to him. 

Successful men are often niggardly 
of advice, while the prattling tongue 
nearly always belongs to failure. 
Therefore, when a successful man does 
advise, heed him. 

71 



Glimpses anD jEptarams 

Happy is the man of old books. He 
hears voices whose sweetness years 
cannot destroy, whose bright eyes the 
dust of ages cannot dim. 

It requires a good deal of brain to 
protect the heart. 

In a man's surprise is a reflex of his 
ignorance. 

What is art? A semblance of truth 
more beautiful than the truth. 

The lover who seeks to be liberal is a 
hypocrite, a sneak-thief robbing his 
own heart. 

The stake of the past and the gibbet 
of the present are emblems of martyr- 
dom. 

It's raining now, rhythmic, poetry — 
all poets have been as water. I will 
class them for you. Keats, the rivulet; 
Shelley, the brook; Byron, the creek; 
Tennyson, the river; Wordsworth, the 
72 



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lake; Milton, the bay; and Shakes- 
peare, the waters of all the world, the 
sea. 

When we meet one with a noble pur- 
pose we feel stronger, though we may 
not know what that purpose is. 

There is a difference between forget- 
ting a thing and never having known 
it. But how natural it is for a man 
who never knew to say, "I forget." 

"My dear" is the first link in the 
chain of bondage 

Christ died to save every woman 
anyhow, and every man who does the 
best he can. 

How rare it is that we find a soothing 
truth. When I was a child, I had to 
lie to protect the skin on my back, and 
I imagined that truth was a set of stiff 
bristles rising up to invite punishment. 
73 



Glimpses anD Epigrams 

Even a trick that causes a poor heart 
to laugh is better than many a cool 
virtue that goes about rebuking sin. 

When a man becomes known as a 
good fellow the roadway that leads to 
success is closed to him. When 
favors are to be distributed they are 
given to other people. 

We may be modest observers of 
action, but we are egotistic readers of 
motive. 

How complete a scoundrel a man 
may be, and yet hold the admiration 
of honest women. 

It is pleasant to be among other peo- 
ple who have not caught from the world 
the trick of concealing their feelings 
and who love simple music. 

A lonesome song is the spirit of 
patience. 

There is always some sort of hope as 
long as we are interested in ourselves. 

74 



of ©pie 1Rea& 

At the threshold of a new venture, 
we look back upon the hopes that led 
us into other undertakings and upon 
many a failure we bestow a look of 
tender but half reproachful forgiveness. 

You have a habit of silence that en- 
forces respect for your talk. A talka- 
tive man utters many an unheeded 
truth. 

The poet is not the only man who 
really lives,— those who worship with 
him, live with him. 

The caves and nooks and quiet pools 
that lay along the stream are dreamful; 
there was not a mighty rock nor bold 
surprising bluff to startle one with its 
grandeur, but at the end of every view 
there was the promise of a resting place 
and never was the fancy led to disap- 
pointment. Now gurgle and drip, now 
perfect calm, the elm leaf motionless, 
the bird dreaming. And had history 
marched down that quiet vale a thou- 
75 



Glimpses anfc Epigrams 

sand years ago and tinged the water 
with the blood of man, how sweetly 
verse would sing its beauty, from what 
distances would come the poet and the 
artist, the rich man seeking rest — all 
would flock to marvel and to praise. 
Ah, we care but little for what nature 
has done, until man has placed his 
stamp upon it. 

Selfishness, extreme, unyielding sel- 
fishness, is the essential oil of success. 

If a poet would look to his fame let 
him die when there is no other news. 

If hope worked half the time there 
wouldn't be one-third as much trouble 
in the world. 

Love itself is a divine outlaw. It 
tramples upon reason. Man has sought 
to regulate it, but he cannot. The 
cynic has striven to kill it with ridi- 
cule, but it has seized the cynic and 

7 6 



of ©pie IReafc 

has made his soul beg for mercy. God 
does not restrain it, for it is a part of 
Himself. 

Unless we look for cares they some- 
times pass unobserved and unfelt. 

The angels smile when we are kind 
to a bird. 

A woman will pardon a thing that's 
rash where she would look with scorn 
upon a gentle stupidity. 

A man may stand shoulder to shoul- 
der with the law and yet wound his 
own conscience. 

Love does not cast out fear; love in- 
vites fear; fear is love's companion. 

What infatuation did common sense 
ever sanction? The man who could 
love wisely was a mere arithmetician, 
a shrewd figurer, an exactor of weight* 
and measures; the man with a deept\, 
warmer, purer soul loved heedlessly, 
77 



Glimpses anfc Bpigrams 

How natural it is that the stupid 
should be dignified? 

If a man be not vain, it is hard for 
him to believe that a beautiful woman 
loves him. 

An old scholar looks with dread upon 
any sort of change. 

What is that something which pilots 
men into the achievement of success? 
It cannot be the mind for wise men 
often strive in vain for recognition. 

There is bravado in confessing to the 
world, but confessing to a friend is a 
virtue. 

Nature is a thoughtless spendthrift; 
and love is a spendthrift; the Galilean 
was a spendthrift, for at the hearts of 
all men he threw His jewels — the 
rubies and the diamonds of his love 
In the eyes of society, of the law, he 
was a vagabond, and I love him for 
that. He was the truest of all Bohe- 
78 



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mians, a wandering genius, looking for 
a place to rest His head. He touched a 
vice and glorified it into a virtue He 
was not looking for the economical, 
the righteous; He frowned upon rules; 
conscious virtues. And instead of 
making me a bigot, it has made me 
liberal. I can scarcely bring myself 
to blame a man who does evil. I feel 
that it is not entirely his fault, for the 
love that I feel has been withheld from 
him. 

Honesty among men is much more 
rare than virtue among women. 

A man can do physical labor and, 
when he puts his tools aside, speak of 
subjects that annoy him; a man 
engaged in mental work cannot put his 
tools aside. 

It is difficult to look through the daz- 
zle and estimate the intelligence of a 
queen. 

79 



(Mtmpses anfc Epigrams 

There has never been a great contem- 
poraneous literature, for the narrow 
lines of the critic run into the past. It 
takes us almost a generation to dis- 
cover that a writer is original; at first 
we call him crude, wanting in art; but 
afterward we may find that what we 
took to be a lack of finish is a new art, 
stronger, bolder than the old art. 

In nearly all wisdom there is a tinc- 
ture of cynicism. 

Work has its degrees, idleness has 
not. We labor hard or easily, but 
when we are idle we simply rust. 

To listen and to muse was more rest- 
ful than to sleep. The first conscious- 
ness of life could not have been sweeter; 
the low roof, the patter, the luxurious 
bed and the soft air, scented with the 
midnight fragrance of the woods. 

Give conscience time and it will find 
an easy bed, and yet the softest bed 
80 



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may have grown hard ere morning 
comes. 

A luxury brings with it the memory 
of a privation. 

Love is by turns a sweet and anxious 
selfishness, while friendship is a broad- 
spread generosity. 

Keen intelligence is never in smooth 
accord with itself. 

A writer steals from himself his most 
secret beliefs and emotions and puts 
them into the mouths of his characters. 

Ah, the tender, the hallowed egotism 
of a mother's love! 

A powerful love looks upon itself as 
hopeless; upon it must be thrown that 
sort of a light, to complete its deli- 
ciousness. 

Education is often the sensitizing of 
a nerve that leads to misery. To be 
a gentleman means to possess a large 
81 



(Mimpses ant) Epigrams 

ability to feel, and to feel is to worry, 
to brood and to suffer. 

The greatest thinkers, the greatest 
poets were too broad and too great to 
live within society's prescription. 
Conventionality is a poisonous vapor, 
and genius cannot live in it. 

If you can't tell what you are good 
for, no other man is ever likely to find 
out. 

The horse on the tread-wheel can 
look through a crack, and see a flower 
growing outside. 

Fame whirls her cloak in the air and 
we never know how soon it is going to 
fall. 

To be enemies must argue a certain 
degree of equality. 

Of course, it is not just to despise a 
man who has no ancestry, but it is a 
crime not to honor him if he has a 
worthy lineage. 

82 



ot ®vie Ifteafc 

Great things do not come from a quiet 
heart. Quiet hearts may criticise, but 
they do not create. Genius is an 
agony, a tortured John Bunyan. 

In matters of business we may cor- 
rect an error, we may rub out one figure 
and put down another, but a mark 
made upon the heart is likely to remain 
there. 

The man of genius always writes near 
home. The foolish and aimless ro- 
mancer seeks a country of which his 
probable readers are not familiar. Then 
he can exercise a fancy acquired from 
unhealthful books instead of throwing 
aside the unlikely, and writing of the 
true. 

Poverty has its arrogance, and fop- 
pery is sometimes found in rags. 

It is reasonable to suppose almost 
anything when you start out on that 
line; but it's not common sense to act 
upon almost any supposition. 

83 



Glimpses anfc Epigrams 

It is a pretty hard matter to live a lie 
even when it is imposed as a duty. 

We are not to be vain of what nature 
has done for us, nor censured for what 
she has denied. We are [all children, 
toddling about as an experiment, and 
wondering what we are going to be. 

Nature may seem to mock her own 
endeavors, but I believe she creates 
with a purpose, though the purpose 
may remain hidden until the end. 

Look there, you see a flower with a 
weed as its parent. The weed has 
done some good, for it has brought 
forth the flower and after all it must 
have held an unconscious refinement. 

Ridicule is the bite of the spider, and 
it ought not to be directed against the 
man who dedicates his life to sacred 
work. 

When a thing touches bottom it can't 
go any further down, but it may rise. 

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The trials, the failures and the suc- 
cesses of other men make us strong. 

Nothing is more tiresome than to 
listen to a man's hopes. 

If a man evinces good sense in con- 
versation, why can't he evince good 
sense in action, since action is but the 
execution of thought? 

Who can trace the filmy thread that 
lies between consciousness and sleep? 
Sometimes I fancied that it was a 
raveling from a rainbow with one end 
in the sunset, the other in the sunrise. 

The perfect gentleman may be a 
bore; the perfect lady may be tiresome. 

In man there is a sort of innocent 
evil, a liking for the half depraved, and 
an occasional feeding of this appetite 
heightens his respect for the truly vir- 
tuous. 

85 



(Bltmpses ant> Epigrams 

The heart of woman will never know 
a perfect home until the love of its 
hero has built a mansion for it. 

There is a difference between the sin 
of a man and a woman, but repentance 
is held out regardless of sex. 

In the hands of love, duty is a sweet 
selfishness. 

Christianity has not improved poe- 
try, although it has blessed the world. 
Poetry, in its truest and sublimest 
sense, is the light of the dawn, and not 
the glare of noontide. 

Without humor there could be no 
high state of civilization. The savage 
frowns; the philosopher laughs. 

There are lanes so romantic that cool 
design could have had no hand in their 
arrangement. They hold the poetry 
of accident. 

There is true reverence in nothing 
save silence. 

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Life can be looked at with an eye 
altogether too conscientious to stand 
the dust that is blown about the street. 

The greatest of men have trod the 
level ground, but it is hard to mark 
history upon a plain; there is no rugged 
place on which to hang a wreath, and 
on the prairie the traveling eye is 
accommodated by no inn whereat it 
may halt to rest. 

The greatest women may not be 
emotional, but the truest women are. 

The gilt on the dome doesn't prove 
that the dome is rotten; it may be strong 
with seasoned wood and ribs of iron. 

Human nature is not over-scrupulous 
in a matter of business. The hard 
knot of competition takes the wire 
edge off the commercial axe. The 
commander of an army, though he may 
be what we term a perfect gentleman, 
does not hesitate to deceive the enemy. 

87 



Glimpses anD Epigrams 

Whenever you see a boy trying to 
amount to something help him, for that 
is a direct good done to mankind. 

The preacher, in words as simple as 
the prattled story of a child, told them 
of the Saviour of mankind. "I want to 
tell you of a man whose life was tender 
and beautiful, who shared the sorrow 
of all humanity. He poured faith and 
love into hearts that were broken; he 
plucked the evil glitter from the eye 
of human wickedness, and in its place 
set the warm glow of trust and affec- 
tion." 

Although a courtesy may be a mis- 
take, it is still a virtue. 

War is sometimes a blessing. The 
world's greatest progress has been 
sprinkled with blood — blood, the em- 
blem of the soul's salvation. 

If you are going to worship a man, 
let him be a hero. 



ot ©pie IReaO 

Tell a man a truth he doesn't know 
and he may dispute it; call to his mind 
a truth which he has known and for- 
gotten, and he regards it as a piece of 
wisdom. 

Eve loved Adam, for Adam never 
neglected her. 

The path of duty is the winding path 
that leads to the sweetest flowers. 

Every evening comes with a new 
mystery. We think we know what to 
expect, but when the evening comes it 
is different from what it was yesterday. 
And it is thus that we are enabled to 
live without growing tired of the world 
and of ourselves. 

A woman's heart is like a bird, beat- 
ing upon the window at night, dazzled 
by the promise of a warmth within a 
glowing room, and seeing not an icy 
cruelty sitting beside the fire, lying in 
wait for a tender victim. 

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Glimpses anfc Epigrams 

She played on the hillside until she 
got the sunshine mixed up in her voice. 

How odd now it would seem to point 
out a man and say, "he once owned, 
in this land of freedom, a hundred 
human beings — owned them in body, 
but Christian-like yielded to God the 
direction of their souls." 

We may for years carry in our minds 
a sort of mist that we cannot shape into 
an idea. Suddenly we meet a man, and 
he speaks the word of life unto that 
mist, and instantly it becomes a 
thought. 

Two wrongs don't make a right, as 
the saying has it, but a wrong with a 
cause is half-way right. 

After all, in the light of the world's 
universal inconsistency, all creeds are 
consistent. 

Ah, but the sweetest communications 
come in a whisper. 
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How the coming of one person can 
change an atmosphere! At one mo- 
ment the breath we draw is a new and 
invigorating hope, the next instant the 
air is parched and dead — we see an evil 
eye, a hated face. 

A thousand scraps of knowledge 
don't make an education 

If a man is too serious we call him a 
pessimist; if he is too happy we know 
that he is an idiot. 

A consistent character in fiction is 
merely a strained form of art. In life 
the most arrant coward will sometimes 
fight; the bravest man at times lacks 
nerve; the generous man may some- 
times show the spirit of the niggard. 
But your character in fiction is differ- 
ent. He must always be brave, or 
generous, or niggardly. He must be 
consistent, and consistency is not life. 

91 



Glimpses an& Epigrams 

If a man has truth in one hand it 
needn't make any difference what the 
other fellow has in both hands. 

Your face is a Vandyke conception 
of a spirit of adventure, you are a 
strength repenting a weakness; there 
are flaws in you, and yet I could wish 
that I were the mother of such a son. 

But if property makes a woman beau- 
tiful to the rich, why should it make 
her ugly to the poor? 

Down deep in the grass a horde of 
insects shouted their death songs. 
Their day of judgment was soon to lie 
white upon the ground. Artists in 
their way, with no false notes, with 
mission ended, they were to die in art, 
among fantastic pictures wrought in 
the frost. 

The late moon was rising, and in the 
magnolia gardens there seemed to 
waver a bright and shadowy silence — a 
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night when every sound is afar off, a 
half mysterious echo— the closing of a 
window shutter, the indistinct notes of 
an old song lagging in the soft and 
lazy air. 

I hate a woman that hates children. 

Adam enjoyed his greatest freedom 
before the appearance of Eve. 

Work-day annoyances fester on 
Sunday. 

Woman is a constant experiment. 
Nature herself does not as yet know 
what to make of her. One moment 
she is a joy, and the next she is search- 
ing for a man's weak spots, like a 
disease. 

The wisest man among wise men 
could easily be a fool among women. 

Hope is the world's best bank ac- 
count. Hope is the soul's involuntary 
prayer. 

93 



Glimpses ant) ^Epigrams 

It was a pleasure to stand in the mist, 
the trees shadowy about him. It was 
dreamy to fancy the fog a torn frag- 
ment of night, floating through the 
day. It was easy to imagine the lake 
a boundless sea. Over the rushes a 
loon flew, a gaunt and feathered lone- 
liness, looking for a place to light. 

Sometimes the biggest liar will tell 
the truest truth. 

In the opinion of the world involu- 
tion is depth. It takes a simple book 
a hundred years to become a classic. 

Words may sometimes be ashes, but 
often they are coals of fire. 

Failure has always been easier to 
understand than success. Failure is 
natural. It comes from the weakness 
of man and nothing is more natural 
than weakness. 

94 



ot ©pie IReafc 

Her complexion reminds me of a 
tinted vase with the light sweeping 
through it 

A woman that smiles all the time 
wants you to think she's better than 
she is. 

Abraham Lincoln could squeeze 
mirth and tears out of the heart all at 
once. When he arose to speak, and 
even before he had uttered a word, 
every man in the audience said to him- 
self, "There is my brother." 

Men who are the soonest to confess 
ingratitude are sometimes the most 
likely to prove ungrateful in the future. 

A wisdom stolen tempts a stealthy 
use. 

A scene may be described, but a 
condition must be felt. 

That the brave are always gentle is 
a fallacy. 

95 



(Mtmpses ant) lEpiarama 

Jealousy is a matter of temperament 
more than of love. 

The theory of to-day may become the 
scientific truth of to-morrow. And it 
may also be the scientific error of the 
day after to-morrow. 

I believe that immortal fruit grows 
upon the tree of sincere repentance. 
I believe that each of us owes to God a 
life of simple purity and honesty. Our 
allotted time on earth is but a few 
days, and what should we gain though 
we be placed in high position among 
men, for high positions soon crumble 
into the dust of forgetfulness and men 
soon pass away. It is not enough sim- 
ply to declare that we love the Lord, 
for love is often selfish; it is not enough 
simply to praise the Lord, for praise 
is sometimes the off-shoot of fear. 
While professing to love the Lord, and 
while showing that we praise Him we 
must look with tenderness upon the 

9 6 



of ©pie Ifteafc 

faults of others; we must speak no evil 
word of a neighbor, neither shall we 
bear tales, for the man who comes and 
tells me that some one has spoken in 
our dispraise, may profess that he 
took our part to hush the mouth of 
slander, yet he destroys our happiness 
for an entire day. 

If I am to have a master, let me have 
a masterful one. 

Is it a kindred narrowness that drives 
a miser to a creed? 

Horses can be called back from a 
false spurt in the race, and another 
start taken, but man must go on. 

Histories are not so broad as some 
other forms of literary work, for they 
are mainly records of the narrow trans- 
actions of men. Women are so far 
above the shallow limitations of his- 
torical composition that no great his- 
tory ha's ever been written by a woman. 

97 



Glimpses an& Epigrams 

To one who has been condemned to 
death there comes a resignation that is 
deeper than a philosophy. Despair 
has killed the nerve that fear exposed, 
and nothing is left for terror to feed 
on. 

Nature sometimes makes sport of a 
man by giving him a heart. And what 
does it mean? It means that he shall 
suffer at the hands of other men, and 
that when his hour for revenge has 
come, his overgrown heart rises up and 
commands him to be merciful. 

Indifference can be more patient than 
love. 

The mind ripens, and why should not 
the heart undergo a change? It is all 
a growth, a development, and nature 
is not to be criticised by her children. 

The things that make the most differ- 
ence are the ones we cannot see. 

9 8 



of ©pie IReafc 

The strongest of all genius — that 
genius which we meet, talk to and 
laugh with and still respect. 

Is a beautiful face but the light 
thrown from a beautiful soul? 

If we are taught to die for love we 
ought to kill for it. 

Art is the old age of trade. 

Prejudices are sometimes our dearest 
inheritances. In a quickly formed 
prejudice there is always more or less 
of intuition. 

A woman may be pleased with light 
talk and with a lively manner, but her 
respect for a man rests upon his ser- 
iousness, his ardor, for to her there is 
a charm even in an enthusiastic trouble. 

The mere existence of a state line 
does not change human nature. Man 
is not changed even by the lines drawn 
about empires. 

99 



c&ltmpses ant) Epigrams 

What has made this country great, 
the gentility of Virginia or the dogged 
industry of New England? To whom 
do we owe most, the silver-buckled 
gentleman or the steeple-hatted Puri- 
tan? 

A man that is easy with a man is 
always exacting with a woman. 

Why should a man have an ambition 
to own large tracts of land — his mind 
can't lie at ease on acres. 

Bunyan held the idea that the only 
way to be good was first to be bad. 

Ah! What is sweeter, and what can 
be purer than the uneducated back- 
woodsman's love of a book? 

Ah, love, we demand that you shall 
not only be happy, but miserable at our 
wish. We would dim your eye when 
our own is blurred; we would smother 
your heart when our own is heavy, and 
ioo 



of ©pic IReafc) 

would pierce it with a pain. Upon her 
children this old world has poured the 
wisdom of her gathered ages, and could 
we look from another sphere we might 
see the minds of great men twinkling 
like the stars, but the human heart is 
yet unschooled, yet has no range of 
vision, but chokes and sobs in its own 
emotion, as it did when the first poet 
stood upon a hill and cried aloud to an 
unknown God. 

I am a strong believer in natural fit- 
ness. We may learn to do a thing in 
an average sort of way, but excellence 
requires instinct, and instinct, of course, 
can't be learned. 

You've got to be foolish or a woman 
will think you've ceased to love her. 
The minute you are strong she thinks 
you have forgotten her. 

No matter how Quakerish in dress a 
man may be, there is a good deal of 
fear mixed up in his contempt for good 
IQI 



(Bltmpses an£> Epigrams 

clothes. And when an old fool imag- 
ines himself in love, a necktie is of more 
weight than an idea. 

I read of love, the rapture of the 
poet and the slow-running syrup of the 
romancer, and I smile. Oh, it may be 
well enough for a man, but for a woman 
— a sprinkle of gold dust on an iron 
chain. 

There is no failure more complete 
than the one that comes along in the 
wake of a success. 

When we realize a weakness we have 
found a strength. 

The majority of men whom we term 
eccentric, are not only wide-awake to 
their own peculiarities, but seem to be 
ever cultivating them to a higher state 
of oddity. 

Luck begets luck, and failure suckles 
a failure, 

102 



of ©pic 1Rea^ 

A man's never so big a liar as when 
he's telling things about himself or his 
enemy. 

Truth told to man is a virtue — told 
to a woman a sublimity. 

A studied art may become a careless 
grace, witness the Frenchman and the 
Spaniard; but the blunt Anglo-Saxon 
must still depend upon truth for his 
incentive — the others taste dainty 
viands; he feeds upon blood-dripping 
meat. 

Upon what does success depend? 
Mind? Oh, no. Industry? No. What 
then? Temperament. Temperament 
is of itself a success. 

There is more wisdom in the Bible 
than in all other books put together. 
I don't care anything about creed, or 
what one man or another may believe; 
I don't care how or why it was written 
— I brush aside the oaths that have 
been sworn on it and the dying lips 
103 



©Umpaes anfc Epigrams 

that have kissed it; I shut my eyes to 
everything but the fact that it is the 
greatest opera, the greatest poem, the 
greatest tragedy ever written. 

At a cross-roads stood an old brick 
house, an ancient rarity upon a land- 
scape white spotted with wooden cot- 
tages. It was a rest for the eye, a 
place for a moment of musing, a page 
of a family's record, a bit of dun-col- 
ored history. It was built long before 
the railroad set the clocks of the coun- 
try, before man entered into business 
co-partnership with the minute and 
employed the second as his agent. 

To the youthful, two summers are 
twins; to the older, they are relatives; 
to the aged, strangers. 

It was a day when we like to read the 
old things which long ago we com- 
mitted to memory. We know the word 
before we reach it, but reaching it we 
find it full of a new meaning. But the 
104 



of ©pie 1Rea& 

hours are long when the heart is rest- 
less. In the woods the mist hung in 
the tree-tops as if vapor were the 
world's slow-moving time, balking 
among the dripping leaves. 

In the matter of marriage genius 
often unconsciously seeks the con- 
stancy of the sturdy and the common- 
place. 

Quiet self-assurance in home-spun 
clothes exists only in America. 

Let the judgment administer upon 
cool affairs and let the heart keep warm 
in its own joy. 

Nothing can appear colder than pas- 
sion's studied by-play. 

A strong rope — made of the strands 
of weaknesses. 

It is a rare charity to pardon a mis- 
deed committed against one's self. It 
is easier to condone a crime committed 
against a neighbor. 

105 



AUG 5 1907 



